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portland art gallery

PORTLAND MAINE'S ART GALLERY DESTINATION

REPRESENTING OVER 55 CONTEMPORARY MAINE ARTISTS

VISIT IN PERSON OR ONLINE

OPEN EVERY DAY FROM 10 AM TO 5:30 PM.  CALL (207) 956-7105 .

MONTHLY EXHIBITIONS OPEN ON FIRST THURSDAY5-7PM

"Barter's art harks back to Marsden Hartley and other American Modernists and their abstracting ways, a kind of school has spring up in his own impressive wake.  You can hear the gallery-goer point to a brashly painted Maine landscape by a contemporary and say 'I see a bit of Barter there'. - Carl Little, Maine art critic

Matt Barter was born in 1975. He was raised in the village of Sullivan, just outside of Ellsworth, and grew up as part of the highly creative Barter family. With his father Philip as his instructor, Matt began painting at a very early age. 

"Every painting starts with a mark, and then you react. Then react to that mark. If make a mark I don't like, I will edit it — but leave it as a moment. A painting is a bunch of little moments. Being finished is indescribable. Intuition is my friend." - artist, Matt Chamberlain

Nina works in a carriage-house studio at her sheep farm in Hollis, Maine. She photographs important events for families, supports her commercial clientele, and captures beauty and irony wherever she is. Traveling the world photographing and writing about her experiences, Nina’s work has appeared in multiple national publications.

INTERVIEWS with OUR January featured artists

Matt Barter was born in 1975. He was raised in the village of Sullivan, just outside of Ellsworth, and grew up as part of the highly creative Barter family. With his father Philip as his instructor, Matt began painting at a very early age. In fact, he sold his first painting, a still-life based on Matisse, before the age of 10. As soon as he was able, Matt helped his father with the wooden wall reliefs that people associate most closely with Philip. By the time he was in his teens, Matt started creating his own wall reliefs. "WorkingHarbor," a three-panel relief of a Maine fishing village, is the latest example of the younger Barter's amazing creativity. In addition to his paintings and wall reliefs, Matt Barter carves marvelous, folky figures of fishermen. Whether laden down with buoys (painted in the blue and brown shades of the Barter brothers' own lobster buoys), lobster crates, or fish, Matt's fishermen are both expressive and fun.


Every painting starts with a mark, and then you react. Then react to that mark. If make a mark I don't like, I will edit it — but leave it as a moment. A painting is a bunch of little moments. Being finished is indescribable. Intuition is my friend." - artist, Matt Chamberlain. Born and raised in Portland, Maine, Matt Chamberlain explores beauty in the both the blue-collar roughness and cosmopolitan style of the coastal city he calls home. His canvases are imbued with that duality between skyline and shoreline: the place where sidewalk meets sheepshank, dive bar meets rock barnacle. Stints in New York City (Harlem, Astoria) and Boston (Allston, Cambridge) have widened his worldview, but Portland always calls him back. Process and material are the center of his art. 

Nina Fuller works in a carriage-house studio at her sheep farm in Hollis, Maine. She photographs important events for families, supports her commercial clientele, and captures beauty and irony wherever she is. Traveling the world photographing and writing about her experiences, Nina’s work has appeared in the Boston Globe, The New York Times, Maine Sunday Telegram, National Geographic Traveler, Practical Horseman, Horse and Rider, Women and Horses, Mountain Living Magazine, Animal Fare,  American Cowboy, Fido Friendly Magazine and other international publications. Nina gives group and individual workshops in photography and Equine Assisted Photography Therapy (EAPT) at her farm in Maine where she shares her experience and understanding of photography and horses with those who aspire to see the world in a new and exciting way. 

"Barter's art harks back to Marsden Hartley and other American Modernists and their abstracting ways, a kind of school has spring up in his own impressive wake.  You can hear the gallery-goer point to a brashly painted Maine landscape by a contemporary and say 'I see a bit of Barter there'.  Like Andrew Wyeth, he has his emulators. And you can understand why: the appeal of Barter's stylized renderings of trees and rivers, mountains and clouds, is powerful.  His ability to extract the essence of the landscape provokes marvel.  He sees the geometry of a peak, the jagged coursing of woodland streams, a snowfield's curving contours.  His palette, often not for the faint of hue, underscores his lively vision. He is a master simplifier, composing each canvas out of the core elements of the scene: trees, water, sky and island, say.  In the purity and boldness of his northern vision, Barter is kin to some of the painters in Canada's Group of Seven.  There is a lot of give and take in life, and Philip Barter's paintings reflect his our-of-the-ordinary journey.  To play on his name, this artist had bartered plenty to achieve the stature he enjoys today: one of our very finest." --Carl Little, Maine art critic and author 

Read what the New York Times says about the Portland Art Gallery.