Portraits of a place: BHPL to host landscape painter Wendy Lewis

June 29, 2026

By Staff

BLUE HILL —The Blue Hill Public Library will present “Wendy Lewis Blue Hill Landscapes,” a solo exhibition by Maine artist Wendy Lewis, on view at the library from July 2 through July 30. The library will also host a reception on July 10, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., a press release said.

Lewis has been creating artwork in multiple mediums since she was a teenager, the release said. After studying at the Art Students League with Lennart Anderson and at the New York Studio School with Leland Bell, Mercedes Matter, Milton Resnick, and Peter Agostini, she has worked on three primary series, the release said. These include self-portraits dating back to 1970, Maine landscapes dating back to the 1980s, and recently, dot paintings.

“Over the past 42 summers I have worked on a series of oil pastel landscapes around Blue Hill Bay. These are very specific, local scenes, done one a day, within walking distance of where I’ve lived: on Peter's Cove, at Circle Farm in south Blue Hill, and in East Blue Hill,” Lewis said in the release.

Lewis said she is drawn ‘back to the same spots repeatedly from day to day and year to year.’ Images courtesy of the Blue Hill Public Library.

Lewis said in the release that the “small scale of the work and the simple materials it requires–a drawing board, paper, oil pastels–raise few distractions from the intimate dialogue between seeing and drawing.”

“Within this dialogue, images resonate between shapes and in the darkness of deep colors,” she said. “As I am drawn back to the same spots repeatedly from day to day and year to year, the struggle is to capture this resonance, which seems both local and universal, even as it defies resolution.”

The show will be available for viewing starting July 2, subject to the Howard Room meeting schedule. For more information, contact the library at 374-5515.

The Rising Tide welcomes poems and other artistic endeavors from our community, and showcases them here in our “Create” section. If you have something you’d like to submit—a poem, a picture of a painting, a photograph, a music recording—send it to info@risingtide.media. We’d love to publish it and give you an audience for your creativity.