NORWAY – “Something About Light: The Fine Art of Murad Saÿen” will open Friday, Oct. 3, at Lajos Matolcsy Arts Center, with an opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. The acclaimed, locally produced film “Laurels” will be shown Friday, Oct. 10, in conjunction with Saÿen’s exhibit, as a fundraiser for the Western Maine Art Group. (see accompanying story)

“One of my favorite statements to about anybody who will listen is: The world around us is the canvas, but light is the paint,” said Sayen about his inspiration. “My focus in both painting and photography has been on rendering the myriad qualities of light ever since I began to create images with intent in college.”

Saÿen was born in Philadelphia in 1945 and has been an artist since childhood, painting since age 6. He has a worldwide reputation as a maker of so-called “art knives” and is also a published and longtime photographer and a writer. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy of ethics from Penn State University and attended the master of fine arts program in photography at the University of New Mexico. His interests are in landscape, including the social landscape, and his fine art photographic work is available through Domaine Gallery in Portland.

“Western Maine has been both my home and my primary source of inspiration for the last 30 years. My paintings, while somewhat eclectic in their choice of subjects, still draw heavily on images generated right here in the Oxford Hills. Therefore, I am delighted to have the opportunity to share with the folks of this area the images that I have done as much out of love, as out of my need to make a living as an artist,” said Saÿen.

In 2000, Saÿen published his first novel, “Above and Beyond,” a story about healing post-traumatic stress syndrome. It is also a mystery that spans European and American culture, World War II and Vietnam. He wrote under the pen name, Derek Stockton.

Another of Saÿen’s literary achievements, “Maine, the Home Place,” is a book of 96 color photographs published in 2003, by University Press of New England. It spans three decades of life in rural Maine and was praised as being a definitive record of inland Maine.

Saÿen lives in Paris, where he teaches advanced painting at the Painted Mermaid Gallery and at the Matolcsy Arts Center.