I can't really review the Noriko Sakanishi show at June Fitzpatrick, partly because the schedule doesn't work out, but also because I've written about her a lot over the years. I don't have much that's fresh to say.

Even so, when I got to the show recently, I got more than I expected. I think Sakanishi is one of the best artists working in Maine today, and this is one of the best shows I've seen by her.

Ken Noland died a few days ago, here in Maine at Port Clyde. He was nearly the last of a generation of fine painters who were looking at things in similar ways, and easily the most influential. His stripe, chevron and target paintings opened to door to a whole new way of painting for a great many others that came after, including Frank Stella, Sean Scully, Pat Lipsky, Winston Roeth and many more.

The headline in New York Times, reporting the death of Andrew Wyeth at the age of 91, said he was both ‘revered and ridiculed.' That's a fitting phrase to use, not because it's true, but because it was clearly the way Wyeth wanted it.

IFO (Arrival), the big (six by nine feet) 2004  Scott Davis painting often on view at the Portland Museum of Art, is a difficult one and takes some getting used to.

The art world has lost a familiar presence with the recent death of Ed Groome. Ed and his wife, the painter Martha Groome, were always present at every art opening of note, and many that were pretty obscure. They would travel sometimes enormous distances to be part of an opening. It was not unusual to go to see a friend’s show at some little gallery at the end of the last road on a peninsula and find Ed and Martha already there.

Today we introduce a new beginning - a new thread on this blog that we're calling "Innocent Bystander," in which Portland Phoenix art reviewer Ken Greenleaf will muse on various aspects of the local art scene and, as in this entry, meditate more deeply on particular aspects.

On the painting Pont St. Michel by Henri Matisse at the Portland Museum of Art