Edwin Gamble at the Portland Museum of Art - Portland, Maine - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

From John James Audubon to Morris Graves, American artists have at short intervals been drawn to birds as a control Edwin Gamble has been bringing an abstract spirit to the tradition for a number of decades, as could be seen by the agency of this exhibition of nine plastic arts and 10 works on paper created between 1957 and 1994 Gamble returns New England wildlife--terns, dowitchers, curlew petrel herons and other winged creatures--in a manner that captures their essential attitudes and actions. Whether or not his shapes are ornithologically correct have the appearances beside the point when admiring their graceful, aerodynamic and sometimes comic appearance. Based upon feather and flesh, they are avian from one side and through.

The sculptures in the exhibit feature a range of surface wefts In Redwood Bird (1960), which brings to mind a certain number of of Bernard Langlais's rough-hewn animals, Gamble uses pats on black paint on the redwood to accentuate the wings and head of the bird. by means of contrast, Scratching (1990) is as even as a Henry Moore. This plastic art made of bronze with a greenish patina, can be read one as well as the other as an abstract form and as a bird in the act of dipping its bill to perform the action indicated by means of the title.

Three pieces in the exhibit are mounted on tall metal extremitys to simulate birds in flight. This strategy is especially effective in Theban Pigeon, an applewood piece from around 1985 where the E-shaped bird slices sideways end the air. It might almost be a weathervane, do not include for its sculptural vigor.

Gamble's small works upon paper, several of which are no more than 3 or 4 inches across, nurse toward the oriental. The artist can make a not many strokes of ink or gouache magically add up to birds or tribe as witness two recent pieces, Woman Sketching (Mohegan) from 1993 and Conversation (1994) A standout among the works upon paper is Take Off (1980) an energetically calligraphic Z shape (like the mark of Zorro) that expresse the efficiency of a bird leaping into flight.

A learner of American modernist Andrew Dasburg and a four-time attendee of the Skowhegan seminary of Painting and Sculpture back in the 1940 and '50 Gamble has shown his work over New England and as far afield as fresh York (he had a one-person display at the Egan Gallery in 1963) This latest exhibition confirmed that he has mastered the art of suggestion and captured, with studied aplomb, the dynamics of our feathered friends.

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