There's No Place Like Maine

Some things are worth the wait: Your first kiss. A delicious meal that it took all day to prepare. And now, a solo show by the artist David Allen.

In the interest of full disclosure, David is a friend of the mavens. But that doesn't have any bearing on just how good his recent work is. A sense of place has always infused David's paintings — back when he lived in Bangor, he would render the city's skyline in black, white and sepia tones, often on discarded pieces of the very buildings he was painting.

Today, he and his family live in Appleton, where the old farmhouses and rolling fields and hills have proved a similar muse. The paintings we've seen from "The Gravity of Place," which opens Friday at Asymmetrik Arts in Rockland, are infused with a certain reverence for the land and sea. Allen bathes his subjects in warm, slanted autumn light. Yes, they're lovely in the way Maine landscape paintings often are, but there's something deeper here, something a little melancholy, a little faded, a little nostalgic.

This is Allen's first solo show in years, and take it from us: any place where David Allen paints is the place to be.

"The Gravity of Place" opens Friday at Asymmetrik Arts, 499 Main St., Rockland. It will be on view through July 17. For more information, click here.

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