Gibbs Library is pleased to announce our July/August art exhibit:
Displacement: Immigrant Portraits
About the Exhibit
Gibbs Library is proud to present the evocative artwork of Waldoboro artist, Jean Kigel. These moving watercolor paintings have comprised a topical traveling art show, which will have Gibbs as its summer home.
A reception with light refreshments will be held on Sunday, July 19th, from 2 to 4pm.
“I have created a series of emotive watercolor portraits depicting the suffering and the terror that pushes a person to leave one’s home and come to the United States. I show men, women, and children, uprooted by war, famine, persecution, national disaster, climate change, corrupt regime, and economic collapse. Each portrait is a testimony documenting the emotions that accompany forced displacement: the suffering and terror, but also the persistent, fragile hope that propels someone to abandon everything familiar in search of safety and dignity. I accompany each portrait with facts on immigration. By using harmonious colors and background atmosphere, I want the public to value the immigrant people who make up a large part of this country’s labor force, and its intellectual leadership.”
— Jean Kigel, Artist Statement
Jean Kigel grew up in a Latvian family on a poultry farm in Warren, Maine, with German and Finns as neighbors, and came to appreciate the hard-working and the intellectual qualities of immigrants. After a career in teaching high school world literature, she became a full-time artist, specializing in Asian brush painting, watercolors, and oils. Coastal life and abundance of nature inspire her paintings. Jean traveled to Japan and China to study Asian brush painting, and later taught at the Round Top Center for the Arts, the Farnsworth Museum, and University of Southern Maine in Portland. Galleries near and far have shown Jean’s work, as have feature articles in diverse publications. She was greatly honored by the showing of her Maine paintings in the Arts in the Embassy program in Amman, Jordan.
Jean is a member of the Sumi-e Society of America and the Union of Maine Visual Arts. To see her paintings and art journey, visit www.jeankigel.com.