A sense of Hydra

“Hydra: The Sense of a Place,” oil paintings by Theophil Groell, and new works by Joshua Pouwels, through March at the gallery in John Edwards Market, Main Street, Ellsworth.

Walking down the stairs to the basement gallery at John Edwards Market is like walking off a plane. When you get to the bottom, you find you’ve landed in an island paradise, minus the balmy weather.

The front room of the gallery (which doubles as a wine cellar) is packed full of Theophil Groell’s oil paintings of Hydra, a Greek island where he spends half the year. The other half he spends in Deer Isle.

Inspired by the light dancing on the water, the craggy shoreline, gnarled old trees, windswept hills and spring-green shrubs, Groell painstakingly translates this island onto the canvas. While the paintings are almost picture-perfect, this is not his intent. Rather, he tries to capture the feeling of a place through a slanted ray of sunshine or the weathered, leathery bark of a tree.

He often examines the same subject at different angles or times of day, such as the tiny, rocky island depicted in his “Ayios Yiannis” and “Ecclesian Echoes.” They are similar, yet separated by the way the island reflects in the azure sea, or the way the sun highlights the bumpy landscape.

Groell’s brushwork is very controlled, yet the paintings don’t feel sterile. The landscapes are notably lacking people, yet they aren’t lonely. Looking at them is like stumbling over a little hideaway that only you know about – secret gardens, hidden glades, a villa awaiting its owner’s return.

If there’s one thing that unifies Groell’s paintings with the works in the back room of the gallery, it’s an understanding of light. The bold, bright, abstract paintings of Gouldsboro art teacher Joshua Pouwels are a sharp contrast otherwise.

These are less about precision, more about play. In Groell’s paintings, you see individual blades of grass on a mountainside. On Pouwels’ canvases, you may not even be able to tell if there’s a mountain there. The artists are strikingly different in style, yet equally engaging.

Pouwels’ “January Moosehead Lake #1” is a study in violet, a magenta-tinged cove surrounded by a ridge of dark plum. Are they trees? Are they mountains? Whatever they are, they stand solid against a streaky lavender sky.

His paintings are especially strong when they depict the beginning or end of a day. In “January Moosehead Lake Region,” the setting sun leaves the mountaintops and the tips of a grove of pines glowing against the nightfall like a neon sign punctuates a dark storefront.

– By Kristen Andresen

“Rockland’s Working Waterfront,” photographs by R. Waldo Emerson Tyler, through July at the Island Institute, Main Street, Rockland.

There’s no mistaking what powered Rockland’s economy in the early decades of the 20th century.

The basic elements are prominently featured in a collection of photos displayed in the lobby of the Island Institute’s offices on Main Street: seagoing vessels, fish, rock, lime and men at work among them all.

The 60 or so photos – attractively printed and mounted in different sizes – are the work of the late R. Waldo Emerson Tyler. Named for the 19th century writer, Tyler was born in Massachusetts in 1893 and grew up in Camden. He died in 1976.

Given a Kodak box camera for his 12th birthday, he found his niche early, winning a photo contest sponsored by the Boston Globe. Tyler worked for 20 years with a Rockland commercial photographer, then opened his own studio on Main Street.

The exhibit features a mix of posed and candid photos, and those that fall somewhere in between. The theme is Rockland’s working waterfront, with most taken during the first few decades of the century.

One shot shows rows and rows of cod, split open and drying on “flakes.” Two men, dressed casually, lean on a box and look at the camera. Another captures the steam lighter Sophia hard at work lifting stones from its deck to a new jetty, black smoke billowing, white steam rising. Yet another shows a silent movie news crew filming men repairing nets in 1920.

The images are crisp, and while they are more documentary than art, many feature expansive views that give their subject a larger-than-life sense. Many of the shots must have been taken from atop buildings, giving a broad view of the city’s waterfront that is so different today, and yet so much the same.

– By Tom Groening

ArtSeen is a monthly column that focuses on art exhibits and gallery shows that capture the attention of Bangor Daily News reporters. It appears monthly in the scene. To submit an item or event for consideration, send a press release to Bangor Daily News, attn: Kristen Andresen, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402-1329.