(Past Event) Coastal Imaginings: Artist Panel Discussion with Patricia Brace, Ethan Murrow, and Joshua Reiman

Join three contemporary New England artists for a conversation exploring imagined marinescapes in dialogue with the work of Winslow Homer. Patricia Brace, Ethan Murrow, and Joshua Reiman each use the evocative power of place-based imagery to explore how landscapes can conjure memory, emotion, and a sense of human presence. Together, they'll discuss how imagined landscapes create shared experiences that linger somewhere between dream and reality.

Patricia Brace will discuss her work A Sun Without A Sphere. This work signals catastrophe and boundlessness: the sun uncontained, radiating without orbit, and the ceaseless Arctic light. Created in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, where warming occurs five times faster than the global average, the work confronts the climate crisis through performance, kinship, and fragile endurance.

Ethan Murrow will speak about his drawing, painting, and lithography works that seem to let you in on a story happening somewhere at the edge of the world. His characters inhabit fantastical landscapes doing familiar yet absurd actions. His detailed drawings speak to the mysterious realm between human action and vast pastoral landscapes.

Joshua Reiman will share his short film Vanished into Plein Air which provides a romantic view of a marinescape painter who ventures outside to make a painting by the ocean, and realizes the nature is just not good enough without people to inhabit his canvases. Shot in Prout's Neck, Maine and inspired by Winslow Homer's last painting Driftwood, the film offers us a glimpse into an artistic process, where one’s emotions meet pigment and oil beside the ocean and rocky shore.

About the Artists:

Patricia Brace’s practice is located in rural Maine. Overall, her work is concerned with the body as it relates to place and care, examining how we cohabitate with nature during a rapidly unfolding climate situation. Brace has attended residencies including The Arctic Circle (2025 and returning in 2027), The Studios at MASS MoCA, the Alumni Residency at Maine College of Art & Design, and the Vermont Studio Center. She has exhibited nationally at venues such as PS122 Gallery (New York, NY), Gary Snyder Project Space (New York, NY), SOHO 20 (New York, NY), Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), and Trestle Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), as well as regionally at 82 Parris (Portland, ME), the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Rockland, ME), and the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design (Portland, ME). Brace’s awards include the Kindling Fund Grant, Hildreth Professional Development Grants from MECA&D, and the Women Invigorating the Curriculum and Cultivating Diversity Committee Grant at the University of Maine, Augusta. She is co-founder of the Performance Art Initiative, Sine Gallery, and GROUNDWORK retreat, and her work is held in the permanent collections of the Portland Museum of Art and Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City. Brace recently taught at Maine College of Art & Design as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Painting, Sculpture, Foundation, and MFA in Studio Art and is currently enrolled in the PhD program at the University of Maine, focusing on the intersection of climate science and interdisciplinary art. 

Ethan Murrow is an artist and Professor of the Practice in Drawing and Painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. His multidisciplinary practice—which spans drawings, paintings, murals, sculptures, and publications—delves into narrative explorations of landscape, environment, agriculture, and the subjective nature of history. Ethan is represented by Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire in Paris, Obsolete Gallery in Culver City, California, and Winston Wächter Fine Art in New York City and Seattle. His work is included in numerous public, private, and corporate collections and has been widely reviewed and published internationally. Notable recent commissions include projects for the Louis Roederer Foundation in France, Expedia, Meta, The Broad Institute, D+S Editions France and the city of Boston.  Ethan's solo museum exhibitions have been presented at the Cahoon Museum of American Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the Currier Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, and the Clay Center in West Virginia. Among his accolades are the Stein Prize with MOCA Jacksonville, a monograph published by Hatje Cantz, and an official selection for the New York Film Festival.  

Joshua Reiman’s work is focused on spatial practice including sculpture, film, video, assemblage, and photography. His work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and film festivals across North America, Europe, North and West Africa, Japan, and Australia. Reiman is an Associate Professor of Sculpture at The Maine College of Art & Design, where he is also the Gary Ambrose Chair of the Sculpture Program. Joshua has an MFA in Sculpture from Syracuse University and a BFA in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute.  Reiman’s exhibitions include Bildmuseet, Umea Sweden, The Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, The Portland Museum of Art, NAPOLEON Philadelphia, Hallwalls Buffalo, NY, NKV Wiesbaden, Germany, and Arcane Afrika Art COP22. Reiman wrote Strange Devices, a book of interviews with contemporary sculptors and essays on the future of sculpture. He is also a writer for Sculpture Magazine. Joshua and his wife Addy and son Ole currently live in an 1880s brick house in Portland, ME with their dog Loki. Joshua was once a Rubik’s Cube champion and is now an eternal dreamer.