PRESS RELEASE

Who:  Alison Rector of South Portland and Monroe Maine

What:  “Alison Rector:  Silkscreen Season on a Maine Farm” art gallery exhibition

When:  May 1 – 28, 2025

Where:  Courthouse Gallery Fine Art, 6 Court Street,  Ellsworth 04605, 207-667-6611

Courthouse Gallery is pleased to present Alison Rector: Silkscreen Season On A Maine Farm, the first exhibition highlighting Alison Rector’s entire collection of silkscreens. The prints and exhibition catalog document her life on a Maine farm. The exhibition will be on view May 1 through May 28, with an Artist’s Reception on Wednesday, May 7, from 5–7pm, and an Artist Talk with Alison Rector and Carl Little on Saturday, May 10, at 2pm. The exhibition, reception, and artist talk will be held at Courthouse Gallery in Ellsworth, and all are free and open to the public.

Alison Rector’s collection of forty-three silkscreens emerged over a thirty-five-year period after she and her husband embraced the homesteading life when they moved to Monroe, Maine, in 1990, exchanging urban life for rural. Inspired by their life on a farm, Rector created one silkscreen per year as a way to connect with family and friends during the holidays. These small autobiographical, multi-colored prints range in size from 3 x 4.5 inches to 7.5 x 4.5 inches. In addition, Rector created several large silkscreens highlighting a variety of subjects such as a cluster of abandoned chicken barns referred to by locals as “The Plantation.” These barns hark to Waldo County’s active chicken farming tradition, one that largely ended by the 1990s.

The couple wanted, Rector says, “access to land and to grow things and have animals.” Over the next thirty years they embraced the homesteading life, raising sheep, cows and chickens, growing hay, and making apple cider and cheese. “We did a little of everything in a back-to-the-lander kind of way,” Rector recalled. In 2014, Rector and her husband moved from the old farmhouse into a small energy-efficient “passive house” on an adjacent field. They began a cooperative farm ownership with young farmers to help facilitate a long-range plan for farm transition.

 This exhibition and the accompanying catalog with an essay by Carl Little place Rector’s silkscreens in context with Maine’s longstanding tradition of printmaking, as well as documenting her remarkable record of a back-to-the-land experience in Maine.

Courthouse Gallery is located at 6 Court Street in Ellsworth. For Gallery hours or for more information on upcoming exhibitions call 207-667-6611, or visit courthousegallery.com.

Alison Rector is a representational painter and silkscreen printmaker, best known for her luminous oil paintings of interiors. Her paintings often depict light falling across objects or filtering through windows and doors to create a sense of atmosphere and allure. Rector holds a BA in Art from Brown University.  Her work is represented by Courthouse Gallery in Ellsworth and Greenhut Galleries in Portland,   She has been featured in Art New England, The Gettysburg Review, Maine Home + Design, and Carl Little’s book More Paintings of Maine. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including several biennials at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and the 2003 biennial at the Portland Museum of Art. Rector makes art in studio workspaces in Monroe and Portland, Maine.  For more information, visit alisonrector.com