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Saturday, May 18, 2012
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Westport artist shines at her Whaling
Museum opening.
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Westport artist shines at her
Whaling Museum opening. EverythingWestport.com Saturday, May 18, 2012 Click here to view the
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The springtime exhibit brings a fresh
perspective on the city’s harbor and working waterfront with the first public
showing of a series of paintings by Westport-based artist Dora Atwater Millikin. The talented oil-based artisan has
studied the New Bedford waterfront for years, inspired by its busy harbor and
the fishing industry. "I have been out in friend's
boats and have walked the wharfs to sketch, snap images and gather color
studies of the boats docked or leaving and returning from getting their
catch," Millikin said. According to Milliken, "my
primary palette maintains harmony and color surprises throughout the
paintings. Thick paint exaggerates seemingly less important areas of objects
and negative space while thin areas give depth." The daughter of a swordfisherman from
Sakonnet Point, Milliken describes herself as a contemporary New England
coastal painter. "I address my subject through composition, color and paint
surface," Millikin said. "Rigging, booms,
hardware and all the bits and pieces of these boats that often combine to
become a cropped chaotic mass of line and form." The thoroughly modern and airy Centre
Street Gallery presented ghost-like portals through gauzy light shades that gave visitors
a firsthand look at the historic working waterfront with its fishing fleet
and counting houses so expertly captured on linen by the fisherman's
daughter. "From a historical perspective, this is not unlike what Bradford
did a hundred years ago," New Bedford Whaling Museum director of
communications, Arthur Motta, said of the exhibit. "Bradford's paintings are a treasure now. But his work was also
contemporary art and a record," Motta said. "This is also a record
that will be important looking into the future." "In essence, these paintings as with all my work, are first and
foremost about how I use paint as it relates to my subject matter and how I
wish to reveal my interpretation of that subject to my viewer." - Dora
Atwater Milliken. Millikin
grew up in Little Compton, Rhode Island. She was educated at the
Stoneleigh-Burnham School, Greenfield, Massachusetts, Newcomb College (Tulane
University in New Orleans, Louisiana), and Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts,
Old Lyme, Connecticut. She has served as vice president of the board of
directors of both The Art League of Rhode Island and South Coast Artists,
Inc., and she is an elected artist member of the Copley Society. Recognition of her work includes the Edwin Gould Foundation Award,
the John Stobart Fellowship Award, the Joseph
Hartley Memorial Award for Oil, and the Fidelity Investments annual juried
competition at the Providence Art Club. She is an artist member and painting teacher at the Providence Art
Club. Millikin
maintains a studio in Westport Point, Massachusetts and is represented
exclusively by Walker-Cunningham
Fine Art, Boston. The exhibition runs through Thursday, October 18, 2012.
Above: Dora Atwater Millikin
drew her inspiration for her latest exhibition from New Bedford's working
waterfront. - - - - - End - - - - - ©
2012 Community Events of Westport
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