Beginning Thursday, Nov. 14, and continuing through Christmas, Gold/Smith Gallery is featuring new paintings by John Vander. The suite of work is called “The Seasons.”

The works are spontaneous mixed media improvisations on designs from Vander’s notebooks. They are an attempt to capture seasonal changes of light, weather and atmosphere. They were done as an interaction between observation and memory.

“Although I have had the designs for a long time, the work is new,” Vander said. “I’m interested in how the physical qualities, handling properties of the various media, graphite, watercolor, oil pastel, acrylic, can act as a metaphor for experience.

“I don’t think of my paintings as abstract; although my language is not naturalistic, I try to evoke feelings of the seasons and times of day in northern New England, even when the subject isn’t evident at first.”

Maine art critic, Philip Isaacson, once wrote, “In fact, it is precisely Vander’s gift for abstracting the visual energies in a bit of land that gives his work its vitality, its tension. I should add to this by saying he is a brilliant colorist as well.

“Vander approaches color and form in two distinct ways. In some paintings he lays down a field of one color and then opposes it with another. Then he provides an overlay of free- almost wild- calligraphic symbols,” Isaacson continued. “The second approach of color and form is less structured. Here there are no distinct fields and the calligraphic forces seem more fortuitous. Quiet, cloudy forms settle in the paper, and we cannot use them to find an easily readable scene. Because we are held to two dimensions, there is no feeling of depth. Still, the color on the face of the paper makes forms, and we have the urge to give meaning to them.”

The Seasons exhibit is dedicated to the memory of Philip Isaacson, champion of the artists and the arts and a very dear and much missed friend of ours and hundreds more.

This exhibit, the last for the 2013 season at Gold/Smith Gallery, will be celebrated at an opening for the artist on Saturday, Nov. 16 from 3 to 6 p.m.at the gallery. The public is invited to come and enjoy some seasonal treats for the eyes as well as the appetite. Come and meet John Vander and enjoy his “toast” to the seasons.

The Gold/Smith Gallery is located at 41 Commercial Street, next to the Ebb Tide Restaurant, in Boothbay Harbor. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Christmas. For more information, call the gallery at 207-633-6252 or visit www.goldsmithgallery.net.