An invitation to Henry's opening at the Island Institute

On Friday, April 20, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., the public is invited to an opening reception at Archipelago Fine Arts gallery, 386 Main Street in Rockland for Lessons from an Island, a show of work by Islesford artist Henry Isaacs. The food for this reception will be provided by the Islesford Dock Restaurant.

View From Thrumcap oil on linen, 50x60"

Henry has generously offered to donate half of the proceeds from this show to the Outer Islands Teaching and Learning Collaborative (TLC). This initiative by teachers from Islesford, Matinicus, Monhegan, Frenchboro, Isle au Haut, and Cliff islands has created a virtual classroom community where teachers and students have access to a rich and supportive inter-island peer network. To learn more about the Outer Islands TLC, please visit www.outerislandstlc.org.

After earning degrees in printmaking from the Slade School and in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, Henry has enjoyed a long and successful career, and has received many honors for his bold, lively, impressionistic works, including honors from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Boston Globe Foundation, the Hitachi Foundation and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Over the last 30+ years, Henry has focused on both the natural and the inhabited landscape as subjects for his painting, creating abstract as well as realistically defined images. He has curated and coordinated several special arts projects, and has many paintings in collections around the country.

In a 2009 interview for the Maine Art Scene online magazine, Henry provided some insight into his artistic process:
I paint from both location and from my memory of place. I use observation very carefully to construct my images. I never take photographs. All of my canvasses are started on site, and none of them are ever finished out in the landscape anymore. There’s something that happens in the studio that allows me to complete the thought more completely than the strict observational approach that I once followed. In the studio I can recognize the job again, and understand that I am creating a unique two-
dimensional reality.

The show will run through Friday, June 22, 2012. Current gallery hours for Archipelago Fine Arts are 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays, and 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Sundays. For more information, please contact Lisa Mossel Vietze, manager of Archipelago, at 596-0701 or lvietze@islandinstitute.org.