Transitive Verve Two artists at UM museum show a life – and and landscape – in flux

At first glance, George Lloyd’s fast, frantic paintings look like bold abstract compositions, but over time, details start to emerge – a bed or a window, perhaps a set of shelves, maybe a car. The same could be said for Melville McLean’s tranquil photographs of nature, which seem more real than reality – the longer you look, the more your eyes, and your mind, see.

On the surface, the current shows at the University of Maine Museum of Art seem to be a study in contrasts. The work from Lloyd’s “Transition Years,” some of which was painted in Bangor in the early 1980s, was composed on the run, and there’s a sense of immediacy that resonates with the viewer. The large-format color photographs in McLean’s “Northeast by Southwest” seem remarkably still in comparison. But both shows are all about transition, and both artists give their interpretation of fleeting moments, of a world in constant flux.

On film, McLean captures those moments. Through his lens, millions of years of geological, atmospheric and biological activity culminate in a single image, and the minute details in his work, whether it’s a blade of grass or the grooves in a wave-washed fossil bed, hint at the complexity of nature.

“In my work, I want to capture – not just arrest time – but perhaps let people understand we’re arresting change,” McLean, 51, said during a recent interview in Damariscotta, not far from his studio. “Everything is changing into something else all the time, and understanding that changes how you see the world. You are part of something far greater, far grander than anything you’d imagined.”

The photographs are bold, gorgeous and sweeping. The colors pop off the paper, and the intensity of focus, so much more pronounced than we’re used to seeing, led one reviewer to describe his work as having “an almost unbearable clarity.” Still, they’re striking in a way that defies words.

“It comes down to something as simple as this – beauty is necessary but not sufficient,” McLean said.

In other words, if a beautiful pond or brook or wooded scene doesn’t have the power to make the viewer feel alive, or to just say, “Wow,” then McLean will turn his camera elsewhere.

His compositions reveal his formal training as a painter, but his respect for nature and love of science have informed his photography as much as anything else. He reads texts in the natural sciences in his spare time, and he has found that many of the writings have an angle – that “nature” exists where human’s don’t. McLean disagrees.

“I do not perceive nature as a victim or man as an oppressing, dominating force – that is, scarring and maiming,” McLean said. “I prefer not to use that language or that way of understanding nature as something that is separate from man or subordinate to man. It doesn’t help us understand what’s there. … I would rather bring people’s attention to what is actually there in nature, what we’re a part of, from which we are not separated.”

His interest in science has helped him perceive more in the landscape, but his museum work helped him understand the importance of color and lighting. For years, he worked in several Midwestern museums, taking studio photographs of fine-art paintings for cataloging and promotional purposes. In his spare time, he pursued photography as a hobby, taking pictures of people and architecture, and the occasional natural scene.

He found inspiration in the landscape during a trip to the Southwest, but it wasn’t until he moved to Maine in 1990 that things gelled. Though he was born in Canada, Maine felt like home.

“Maine had both the subject and the inspiration and it all came together,” he said.

For the painter George Lloyd, whose work is on view in an adjacent gallery at the UM art museum, the move to Maine wasn’t quite as rosy. After earning a bachelor’s degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and a master’s from the Yale School of Art, he moved to California in 1969 to teach at the University of California at Berkeley. As a young painter, he gained early acclaim for his tight, geometric paintings, which were well-received in San Francisco Bay galleries.

“When I went to California as a young person, I was embraced,” Lloyd said during a recent interview in Portland, which he now calls home. “When I came to Maine, initially I got a cold shoulder.”

In the winter of 1983, he had returned to live with his parents in Brewer while searching for a teaching job, trying to make ends meet while he waited for his summer stint as a visiting artist at Wesleyan University in Connecticut to start. He got a studio in the former Bagel Shop building in Bangor, and worked in relative obscurity. Today, the paintings from that period take up one wall at the UM gallery.

“Most of them were made on Central Street in that building, which was like one foot away from Norumbega Hall,” he said. “You can see a lot of this work was made on the run. They’re low-budget but not no-budget. It’s not really street art. These works were done on the best paper you can get.”

Though 20 years have passed since his Bangor days, there’s still a sense of urgency in Lloyd’s work, in the speedy brushstrokes and scratches that dig deep into the surface.

“I was very compulsive about making stuff whenever I had the opportunity,” Lloyd said. “Some of this work was made under great duress. It was tough going. It was a real transition.”

It was not only a personal transition for Lloyd, but an artistic one, as well. His style, once very structured, gave way to a more painterly approach. He began to be inspired by the paint on his palette, by the colors in nature and the way they could be interpreted.

The paintings from this period – spent in Bangor, Connecticut, New York and finally Portland – spent years in storage, until a 2000 show at San Francisco’s prestigious Hackett-Freeman Gallery gave Lloyd a reason to unpack them. They were later exhibited at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art.

“That’s where some of the work from this transition period started to come to light,” he said.

Both exhibits gave Lloyd time to focus on the work, the emotions, and that tremendous time of change, which he captured on paper and canvas.

“The tentativeness and fragility – that’s what really strikes me after all this time,” Lloyd said, shaking his head. “I didn’t know quite how to finish it. … You really begin to see how art is attendant on the circumstances.”

“George Lloyd: The Transition Years” and “Melville McLean: Northeast by Southwest,” are on view through July 5 at the University of Maine Museum of Art on Harlow Street in Bangor. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 561-3350.