OUR BEASTS || Alicia Ethridge, Celeste Henriquez, Martha Miller

On view May 19 - June 19, 2022

Read the review in the Portland Press Herald

Watch the Artist Talk

Our Beasts presents a compelling and deeply tender collection of works by three Maine artists, highlighting their experiences as mothers and caregivers to children with medical, emotional, and intellectual challenges. Their paintings, mixed-media, and charcoal drawings pair the weight of their realities with the urge to create– two insatiable beasts which cannot be ignored.

Alicia Ethridge is a caregiver for her son who was born with severe congenital heart disease, ultimately resulting in a life-saving heart transplant at eighteen months old. Her contemplative, mixed-media works blend figuration and abstraction, combining imagery of dreamscapes, the natural world, and family life. Themes of motherhood, identity, trauma, ancestors, and family are woven throughout her practice. For six years Ethridge worked as a grief counselor employing expressive art therapies, and leaned into painting as a way to heal herself after her son recovered from his transplant. She has exhibited nationally and throughout New England, including at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.

Celeste Henriquez is a caregiver for her daughter who is a person with autism and intellectual disabilities. She combines drawing, painting, and collage in richly textured compositions that explore the internal and external environments of family. Her practice intertwines themes of human narratives, motherhood, grief, and resiliency, while responding to the beauty and challenges of caregiving. Henriquez is also an educator, and worked for twenty years as an editorial and picture book illustrator. Her work has been exhibited nationally and throughout Maine, including at the Portland Museum of Art.

Martha Miller is the mother of five grown children, including her daughter, Lisbeth, who suffered a traumatic brain injury at the age of six. She has been making portraits and self-portraits in a variety of media for over forty years, pulling together many layers of stimuli to reflect on what it means to be human. Her recent charcoal drawings respond to the eternal balancing act of the artist-mother, and a profound need for expression and release that intensified with the advent of her daughter’s illness over thirty years ago. Miller recently retired from teaching life drawing and portraiture at the Maine College of Art and Design. Her works can be found in collections nationwide, including at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, and the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation in Maine.