A painting of the Red Sox World Series victory in 2007 by Melinda Campbell and a work depicting bales of hay by Terryl Esther Jensen are among the works on exhibit at the Central Maine Medical Center Rotating Art Gallery in June.

Two local artists exhibit at CMMC

LEWISTON – The Central Maine Medical Center Rotating Art Gallery is showing the art of Melinda Campbell of Lewiston and Terryl Esther Jensen of Minot during June.

Campbell is a practicing art educator and painter, who was raised in Swansea, Mass. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 1988 with a double major, receiving bachelor’s of fine arts and art education.

Campbell acquired her first art teaching position in 1988 with the Auburn School Department and teaches elementary art at Fairview School. In 2004 she graduated from the University of New England with a master’s of science in education.

In June 2006 Campbell was commissioned by Platz Associates to design and paint two 20,000-gallon fuel tanks that stand on the Bates Mill Complex behind TDBanknorth. She began her painting in earnest in 2007 and has a Web site: www.melindacampbell.net.

Campbell joined the Kennebec Art Association – Harlow Gallery and has displayed at the USM L/A Atrium Gallery.

She received an Arts Teaching Fellowship through the Maine Community Foundation and will travel to Italy in June to paint the classical landscape of Umbria with Chicago Art School Institute professeur and landscape expressionist painter Nina Weiss. Landscape is her favorite subject.

Campbell and a teaching colleague, Kathy Martin, served as adjunct staff to the Portland Museum of Art in 2006 in which she contributed to a museum curriculum guide that won the 2007 Excellence in Published Resources Award by the American Museum’s Standing Professional Committee on Education.

In 1997 she and a colleague, Pam Fournier, obtained a grant from Northern Utilities that provided an art appreciation event, “Evening with the Masters,” for parents and students. The program appeared in the teaching journal, NEA TODAY.

Campbell said, “I have been painting and drawing ever since I could hold a crayon or pencil.”

“I want you to see what I see through my eyes and share in my passion to paint. I enjoy the leisurely no-muss-no-fuss medium of acrylics. Working with acrylic paints using my digital photographs appeals to me because of the relaxed pace and control of my studio environment,” she said. “I paint what moves me and what I want to share with my audience.”

Campbell resides in Lewiston with her two teenage daughters, Abigail and Jane, her dog, Bruschi, and cat, Brownie.

Jensen spent the first 18 years of her life in New Hampshire.

She said, “I was very fortunate to have an art teacher at school that encouraged my talent. Like most rural schools of that time, the teacher had a circuit – she traveled weekly. She was a very talented lady. Not only did she teach art, but also music. Monday afternoons were spent singing and Tuesday afternoons were spent creating any number of artful projects.”

In the 1960s, Jensen enrolled in the Famous Artists Schools Inc. in Westport, Conn. Then art was set aside as parenting was more than a full-time occupation. Jensen took lessons from an artist near the area where she was living after moving to Maine in 1982. She said, “Some techniques can be instilled, but I feel a lot are inherited. My father was gifted in an artistic way, and so was his father. My grandfather’s medium was oil paint. Now, my husband/partner and I create one-of-a-kind pieces that combine both his love of wood and mine for painting.”

The monthly exhibits are sponsored by the Woman’s Hospital Association in its effort to support patients through fundraising projects during the year. For more information about the association, call the hospital Gift Shop at 795-2295. To learn more about the art exhibits, call Kathleen Cormier at 346-3462.