There’s no one way to paint a New England summer. For some people, summertime is a cold drink on a Cape Cod beach; for others it's a walk through a forested trail teeming with life, and for others still, it's ducking into an air-conditioned building to beat the city heat. At the Savage Godfrey Gallery in Norwell, Massachusetts (located on the South Shore between Boston and Plymouth), mother-daughter team Sunne Savage and Christina Godfrey bring together three painters for their fourth show, “Summer Daze,” on view through August 29. Painters Jen Kelly, Jess Hurley Scott, and John Vinton approach the season with distinct styles that make up a complementary patchwork of summertime scenes. According to Gallery Director Christina Godfrey, the duo’s goal has been to put together group shows that are a mix of hyper-local and regional emerging to mid-career artists. “In the end, we try to … [Read more...] about AESTHETICALLY PLEASING AND DIVERSE

Painter Joe Diggs is having two shows this summer: “Evolving Circles,” a first-time solo exhibition at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) and one which complements it, “Shaping Change,” at Berta Walker Gallery. He said that the show at PAAM is a retrospective of work created between 2016 and 2025. “There are circles in all my pieces. In college and grad school, I was always trying to figure out how to put a circle inside a square.” And that quest turned into the basis for some of his compositions. The show’s theme is “about the circles of life” and the way that people and events intersect with each other and come 360 degrees around; the intersectionality of different disciplines, and how his landscapes, figural work, abstractions and new investigation of patterns circle into each other and move forward, “changing space, creating new spatial relationships.” In his … [Read more...] about A CAPE COD ORIGINAL

In a period in which America’s political, social and environmental certainties are being steadily eroded and dismantled, cutting edge art is needed more than ever to lead us to explore our feelings and hone our critical skills. Three solo exhibitions at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) by painter Nicole Wittenberg, sculptor Elizabeth Atterbury and installation artist Carlie Trosclair demand that the art audience steadfastly question appearances and explore our inner experience. Only with our brains fully engaged can we creatively overcome or adapt to the alarming dislocations and disruptions confronting us both at home and afar. In the lofty daylit hall abutting the entrance to the CMCA, Wittenberg’s supersized, semi-abstract oil paintings, intensely pigmented and charged with flaming orange, leap out at the viewer. Invited by CMCA curator emeritus and former director … [Read more...] about WAKE-UP CALLS IN OUR TIME

When the British illustrator Ralph Steadman came to prominence in the early 1970s, the underground press was flourishing. The wild west of ad hoc leaflets and magazines — filled with outrageous cartoons, stoned musings by hippies, yippies and zippies, and the seeds of the burgeoning self-help movement — connected the counterculture in a way comparable only to the later internet forums of the 1990s and 2000s, before the omnipresence of social media leveled both. These periodical’s illicitness and mind-expanding promises created a sprawling network that kept the in-the-know informed and the soon-to-know on a path to vulgar psychedelic enlightenment. It also made the names of the people who created and contributed to them, from Lester Bangs to the dubious Tom Forçade. While his stay in the underground pages was only a pitstop, Steadman was one of them; and even now, with awards, acclaim … [Read more...] about AND ANOTHER THING …

The New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, Massachusetts has been transformed into a space where botanical beauty meets historical majesty. “Chinese Empresses,” the culminating exhibition of Xiang Li's extraordinary 12-year artistic journey, brings together over 200 hand-painted portraits of Chinese imperial women, each a testament to grace, power and cultural memory. This exhibition, on view through August 24, marks the first time the collection is shown after years of partial showings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Harvard Museums, Worcester Art Museum and beyond. Surrounded by blooming gardens, visitors are invited into a world where history and art unfold across silk with gemstone watercolors. Xiang Li's career is as storied as the women she paints. For 37 years, she was a Master Artist at the Forbidden City in Beijing, where she restored and preserved some of … [Read more...] about TIMELESS GRACE IN BLOOM