Center for Maine Contemporary Art

M. Annenberg, CMCA 2016 Biennial finalist

Fri, 10/28/2016 - 9:30am

    Color, form and shape are the focus of her work. Swirls of paint move across the canvas. Inspired by the oil slicks on pavement after the rain, these paintings explore iridescent and fluorescent color on shaped canvases, which M. (Marcia) Annenberg designs. Some of her other artwork addresses the way our media reports on climate issues, and she is currently part of an exhibit at the Flomenhaft Gallery, in New York City, called EARTH SOS.

    The Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s (CMCA) 2016 Biennial running Nov. 5 through Feb. 5, 2017. The opening reception will be held Friday, Nov. 4, 5-8 p.m. at 21 Winter Street, Rockland. The biennial is the longest running juried competition in the state. This year, it was juried by Christine Berry, director, Berry Campbell Gallery and poet and critic, John Yau.

    Annenberg has been a summer resident of Boothbay Harbor for the past 15 years. She fell in love with the beauty of the Midcoast and joined PAPME (Plein Air Painters of Maine) along the harbor landscape on summer days.

    Brought up in New York City, she studied art at college, and also at the Art Students League, where she met the esteemed artists, Robert Beverly Hale, Isaac Soyer and Daniel Greene. Annenberg worked as an art educator for many years and now mentors graduate art education students who want to become art teachers.

    Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the United States, including Princeton’s Bernstein Gallery, New Jersey; the Raandesk Gallery, the Puffin Room Gallery and Makor Gallery in New York City, the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio; the Red Chair Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri; and the Women’s Museum in Dallas, Texas.

    Her paintings are in the permanent collections of the London Jewish Museum of Art; the Yad Vashem Art Museum in Jerusalem; the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania and the Florida Holocaust Museum, USA. Her artwork is discussed in the BBC documentary “The Private Life of a Masterpiece III” in the episode “The Third of May,” which examines the history, significance and contemporary resonance of Goya’s influence.