Carl Little writes in ART NEW ENGLAND Magazine, Dec/Jan 2006:


For nearly ten years, Alison Rector of Monroe, Maine, has specialized in painting interiors, in particular public spaces such as bowling alleys, laundromats, and post offices. Like her mentor, painter Linden Frederick, Rector renders unconventional beauty and a special quality of light by way of a resonant realism. Her paintings were selected for the 2003 Portland Museum of Art Biennial and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s 50th anniversary invitational in 2002.

The paintings in Rector’s second solo show at Ten High Street continue to present humble spaces, this time “summer shelter” in Maine. Nine grisaille studies and roughly twenty-five oils on panel and linen of various sizes, all painted over the past year, offer a tour of attic rooms with stripped cots, camp pantries with noble refrigerators, a canning kitchen, and simply furnished bedrooms. There’s even a becoming view from an outhouse.

Rector’s larger interiors can be quite complex, often combining interior and exterior. Eavesdropping (50” x 50”) is a stairway view through a banister. The eye is drawn to details: bright-colored rainwear, the screen door design, red sneakers on the porch outside the window, lobster buoys afloat in nearby waters. A sense of expectancy in this and other paintings in the show adds a subtle tension.

While the inhabitants of these spaces are nowhere to be seen, articles of clothing often stand in for them. The handsome Nap (28” x 28”) appears to depict the aftermath of lovemaking, showing two sets of shoes, a watch lying on the bedside table, and a rumpled coverlet evidence of recent residency. “As an artist, I gaze at empty rooms and imagine the people who have lived there,” Rector writes. The viewer shares that experience, and it makes for a memorable visit.


Links to other publications:

Shannon Eagan, Embodiment and Emptiness: Alison Rector's Interior Spaces in the Autumn 2008 edition of The Gettysburg Review

Maine Arts Commission Magazine, Summer 2005, Artist Conversations: Linden Frederick and Alison Rector

Carl Little, More Paintings of Maine, DownEast Books, 2006

Bob Keyes, “Giving Spirit: It’s in the Cards”, Maine Sunday Telegram, ‘05

Christine Parish, “Alison Rector, Mood Painting”, Village Soup Citizen, ‘05




© 2000 - 2012 Alison Rector, all rights reserved.