Mary Armstrong: Conditions of Faith

In the Atrium
September 9–December 8, 2019

E-book | Press Release

Click thumbnails to view selected objects in exhibition

Conditions of Faith presents seascapes and landscapes painted by Mary Armstrong over the last seven years. Nature and memory inspire her layered, complex compositions. Oil and wax depict forces of nature, both imagined and real, in the seascapes. For Armstrong, roiling currents, sunlit estuaries, and particularly rising waves are “a perfect visual metaphor for change, both desired and feared, destructive and regenerative, personal and political.”

Her desert landscapes illustrate the mountain ranges of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California, where the artist has visited since the early 1990s. In these oil pastels Armstrong replaces tumultuous Maine waters with swirling clouds over the Borrego Valley, capturing the shifting relationship between earth and sky.

Mary Armstrong taught painting in Boston College’s Department of Art, Art History, and Film from 1989 to 2019. She divides her time between Georgetown, Maine and Newton, Massachusetts and exhibits throughout the United States.

Conditions of Faith is accompanied by an e-book with contributions from the artist and Suzette McAvoy, executive director and chief curator at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine.