Tending the Garden
Portland Art Gallery March 2026
In thinking about this series, I was influenced by the forms and colors in one of my recent paintings entitled Tending The Garden, and also how both the words Tending and Garden feel so potent and necessary right now.
I thought about the definition of Tending
To care for something or someone.
To watch over, to nurture
Attentiveness, presence.
Tending, in its softness, is strength. It feels like love and prayer.
When we think of Gardens, what do we imagine? Flowers, fruits, tender seedlings, the seed itself? We may think of natural or cultivated spaces, intimate places, or broad horizons. We may start close in, with ourselves, our own nurturance and growth, what promotes health, what causes dis-ease? Our families and friends: little ones, elders, and all in between, the ones we tend and the ones that tend to us. Relationship.
The Earth is our garden. Our bodies, a garden. All of us, all living things, entities, here, now, sharing the complexities of space and time. Humans, just one animal within this grand design.
The most basic premise in sustainable life, shown over and over again is mutualistic relationship. Interdependence: what gives, what gets and what circles back giving.
The paintings then, are perhaps like seeds, holding a muscled hope.
The necessity of vulnerability, the not knowing.
bell hooks says,
Be midwives to the possibility of change. Reach into the darkness of the unknown
and grasp the world that is coming.
The paintings then, perhaps explore the weave and wonder of this becoming: the energies the soil holds, the mystery and wisdom of seeds, the budding, flowering, and necessary decay that always feeds something. Love, the warp and weft of it all.
In her 2026 exhibition, Maine contemporary artist Heidi Daub presents a luminous body of abstract landscape paintings inspired by the rivers, mountains, gardens, and dark skies of coastal Maine. Working primarily in acrylic on linen, canvas, paper, and yupo, Daub layers vibrant color, gestural mark making, and symbolic forms such as flowers, orbs, and waterways to create immersive compositions that explore interdependence, renewal, and the cycles of life. Paintings such as Within The Garden, The Source, River Road, and Following The Sun reflect her deep connection to place, weaving together imagery of sun and moon, blooming forms, and flowing water in contemporary abstract landscapes that feel both intimate and expansive.
Rooted in a multidisciplinary practice that bridges painting, poetry, and music, Daub’s work carries a physical rhythm shaped by her background in dance and performance. Themes of ancestral memory, motherhood, awakening, and ecological consciousness move through the exhibition, as seen in works like What You Tell Me, Revival, and Where We Meet, where light emerges from darkness and gestures toward healing and transformation.
These modern Maine paintings offer collectors vibrant, layered abstract art that speaks to love, resilience, and the evolving relationship between humanity and the natural world.