LORA WHELAN

Lora has lived in Downeast, Maine, for many years now.  She grew up in New York City during a time of political chaos and social unrest, has lived in Vermont on an old farm, lived in a ghost town in New Mexico where artists, veterans, hippies, and others who did not want to fit a conventional model all lived in an interesting mix, and finally settled in Maine near the Canadian border.  

On her path in life, the intersection of past, present, and future has always fascinated her, along with the ghosts of human endeavor left behind, whether a 19th century barn collapsing, the tailing heaps of an early 20 century mining site or NASA aerial photos of crops circles and road patterns.  Using primarily acrylic paint, she explores these marks left by mankind on the earth.  "I find the patterns left behind fascinating, and exploring how to translate what I see into what I feel about it becomes a meditative act, drawing me deep into the paint and canvas."

Increasingly she works in series.  "This allows me to explore ideas over a length of time, and to go back to those ideas after working on another series or on a stand-alone painting.  It is deeply satisfying to create works that are connected, as if each one were a chapter in a story that builds an understanding of a greater whole through its parts."