The Shape of Things is the first major exhibition of painter and master printmaker David Row’s work in his home state. Born in Portland, in 1949, Row is a multi-generational Mainer. His father’s family settled in Perry, a small town in Washington County near the Canadian border, in the early 19th century. Row visited the family homestead many times as a child and thought of it “as the wildest place I’d ever seen.”
In his teen years, Row’s family began summering on Cushing Island in Casco Bay, first in a series of rented cottages, then purchasing a house in 1968. Accessible only by private boat and with no vehicular traffic allowed, Cushing is a world apart. In the early 1990s, Row and his wife Kathleen built their own house and studio on the island. “The studio became a major part of my working life from the summer of 1994 to the present,” Row says, “I live and work there now for five months each year.”
