Richard William Blanchard grew up in Winthrop, and found opportunities to develop his creative inclinations at the University of Maine in Augusta while he was still in high school.  He continued through his university career, working as a sculptor and performance artist as well as honing his skills as the painter and visual artist he’s become professionally.  He now divides his time between Maine and Los Angeles, and the Green Lion is fortunate enough that he’s spending some of his time this summer on a show of his paintings here.

Blanchard’s show is entitled “Northernscapes,” and offers us a vision of the landscape of Maine and some of the feelings and images that unite it with other landscapes of the northern world.  His paintings are intuitive constructions, combining and sometimes breaking up skies, suns, moons, trees, and planes of color into landscapes that are at once abstract and yet grounded in the realities of our particular land forms.  

As he says, “The rawness of the textural landscapes of Maine is constantly an inspiration. The unmanicured ground, the pine trees and the constant change of the weather stirs an internal mood.  In an abstract way, I am consumed by that presence and I want to convey that in my work.”

With over 35 years of painting behind him now, Richard Blanchard has created a canon of techniques with a luminous and subtle color palette and layered, textural brushwork encompassing hemispheres and cosmic planes and bridging them in a unified vision with the trees, houses, stars, heavens and animals of the world around us.  His work has been shown in many galleries on both coasts, including (in Maine) at Aucoscisco gallery in Portland and at Thomas Moser in Freeport.  His show at the Green Lion features new work created for the occasion, as well as some smaller work not seen locally before. 

There will be an opening reception at the gallery, 104 Front St., Bath on Friday, Aug. 16 from 4 to 7 p.m., on the Bath Art Walk. The show will be on display through Sept. 15.