Spotlight on Artist Anne Neely

The Portland Museum of Art presents a spotlight on artist Anne Neely, featuring her painting Squall (2012) alongside the short documentary From West to East: Close to the Bone. Produced by the National Gallery of Art as part of its West to East series, the film explores Neely’s life and work in Jonesport, Maine.
 
The artist’s textured landscapes are produced through “pours” that allow paint to trace the surface of the canvas.  As she describes, “I emerge with the canvas covered, step back and, over time, let the painting find its own meaning.”  Squall hints at an incoming storm, appearing suddenly, perhaps not far from Neely’s home in Jonesport, where she has resided seasonally for over thirty years.  The circular motion of the strokes and splatters suggests an elemental collision, while thickly painted black clouds loom above this apparently natural phenomenon.  In her personal statement about the work, Neely describes observing “the long piers along the waterfront in various stages of decay… I found these jutting wharfs beautiful, their pilings silhouetted oddly against the sky…”. 

Anne Neely (United States, born 1946), Squall, 2012, oil on linen, 60 x 80 3/16 inches. Portland Museum of Art, Maine. Gift of the artist, 2022.26.
 
Neely’s appreciation of the Maine coast puts her in a long line of artists drawn to the state’s stunning natural features and excellent light, though recently artists have been witness to economic uncertainty as well as climate change. Thus, here Neely creates an eerie depiction of a once familiar waterfront; the decaying piers of long-gone sardine packing facilities along the coast feels like an allusion to what she describes as “something else even more foreboding than the deterioration of time.” 

Representing New England in a National Gallery of Art video series, From West to East: Close to the Bone, Neely shares insights from her 30-year residency at her studio, specifically on the impact of climate change on Maine’s coast and working waterfront. Juxtaposed with opening shots of Chandler Bay and the surrounding area, Neely works in her studio and interviews local waterfront workers. “There’s nothing here for [young] people to stay for,” Eunilah Libby tells Neely as she picks crab. Despite the economic uncertainty, the video brims with a strong sense of place. For longtime residents, the challenges and privileges of living in Jonesport are intertwined, as integral to life as the water that winds through Neely’s oeuvre. 
 
Read more: https://www.pressherald.com/2026/07/15/this-maine-artist-is-finding-light-even-in-the-darkest-places/
 

View the documentary and artwork on the PMA’s third floor.