Explore Maine’s Earth, Sea, and Sky with artist Barbara Prey

Barbara Ernst Prey: Earth, Sea, Sky celebrates the artist’s engagement with the landscape and people of Maine, where she has been painting for more than forty years. The exhibition of her watercolors and oil paintings is on view at the Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor from June 30 through October 14, 2018.

The exhibition highlights Prey’s work in Maine through large-scale watercolor paintings and newer oil paintings, including several paintings from Mount Desert Island that are being exhibited for the first time. The show also explores Prey’s creative process and the techniques that she uses in her paintings, which range from plein air nature studies to large landscapes and monumental paintings.

“With the paintings of Barbara Ernst Prey, we are celebrating the place that Wendell Gilley loved and worked in” says Museum Director Sean Charette. “You can see a love of nature and a keen eye for observation in the work of both artists — from the stunning vista of mountain, ocean and sky in Prey’s painting Acadia to the balance of proportion and personality that Wendell Gilley brought to his bird carving through knife and brushstroke. We’re thrilled to share this work with visitors to the museum this summer."

Prey has exhibited internationally and has work in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the White House, the Brooklyn Museum and many other public and private collections. She has also completed commissions for the White House Christmas Card, NASA, and the Art in the Embassies program, and in 2017 created a large watercolor painting (8 x 15 feet) at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art). Prey serves on the National Council on the Arts and has a background in the arts that includes degrees from Williams College and Harvard University. She maintains studios in New York, Massachusetts, and Maine.

The Wendell Gilley Museum celebrates the life and work of Wendell Gilley, a pioneer in the field of decorative bird carving who delighted in helping others make connections with nature and their own creativity. The Museum sustains his legacy by making Wendell Gilley’s work and other collections of art accessible, by providing rich creative programs for all ages, and by hosting annual exhibitions that celebrate people, nature and art. A portion of proceeds from sales of Prey’s work will help support the Wendell Gilley Museum’s work.