Marc Leavitt

Tantric Detail Yacine and Tirdad (USA and South Africa), Marc Leavitt

Tantric Detail Yacine and Tirdad (USA and South Africa), Marc Leavitt

Marc Leavitt has lived and worked in Belfast, Maine since 2001. There he enjoys weekly discussions with a group of artist colleagues, building an extensive art library, and making regular visits to museums throughout Maine. In furtherance of his passion for Art History, Marc travels cross-country visiting museums in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Houston, Los Angeles, and numerous other locales.  

Marc describes his process as follows: “I enjoy developing and returning to multiple series to expand my material approach to abstract painting. My multilayered works reflect a visual investigation regarding flowers, figuration, literal text, collected images, signs, symbols, and music. As each artwork is developed, color represents an overriding concern — with particular excitement occurring when color relationships offer problems that require continual exploration, layering, and refinement. Building up surfaces, including using predetermined ‘random’ colors that seem ‘wrong’ in relation to other colors and forms in a painting, I then spend weeks in the studio to pursue making artworks ‘right’ as objects of aesthetic beauty.” 

Leavitt was represented by Galerie Swanström from 2000-2007 (at Newbury Street and Thayer Street galleries in Boston) and 2012 (in New York). His paintings and works on paper have been placed in U.S. and international collections and featured in Architectural Digest, Boston Common, The Boston Globe, and other publications. Selected juried exhibitions include several at the Cambridge Art Association (with Director’s Choice, Honorable Mention, and National Prize Show recognition), the I-95 Triennial—From Connecticut to Maine at the University of Maine Museum of Art, and CMCA’s Art to Collect Now. 

Selected Solo Exhibitions

  • 2014 - Meditations on Color (44 works), Åarhūs Gallery, Belfast, ME

  • 2010 - Carnevale (25 works), Betts Gallery, Belfast, ME

  • 2007 - Highlights from Four Series (19 works), Gallery @ 96 Main, Belfast, ME

  • 2006 - Flags (7 large-scale works), Galerie Swanström (Thayer Street), Boston, MA

  • 2005 - Picasso's Breasts (8 works), Galerie Swanström (Newbury Street), Boston, MA April-May 2003, Lessons of Muso Kokushi Series (32 works), Galerie Swanström (private international collector event hosted by Bernice and Rahul Singh), Boston, MA

  • 2003 - Selected Works, Gallery @ 96 Main, Belfast, ME

  • 2000 - Colored-paper Painted Drawings Series (72 works), ArtSpace, Boston, MA

Honors and Awards

2004 - DIRECTORS' CHOICE PRIZE, Pop Objects—Flag (48"x60"), Cambridge Art Association, Barbara O'Neil Ross 60th Annual Fall Salon, Cambridge, MA

2003 -HONORABLE MENTION PRIZE, ENERGY, blah, blah, blah . . . blue (72"x53"), Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge, MA, with Jurors Carl Belz, Former Director, Rose Art Museum (Brandeis University) and Portia Belz, Managing Director, Art New England

2003 - NATIONAL PRIZE SHOW, blah, blah, blah . . . black and white (40"x30"), Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge, MA, with Juror Marc Pachter, Director, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

Selected Juried Exhibitions

  • 2019 - The Missing Half-Second, Able Baker Contemporary, Portland, ME, with Juror/Curator John Fireman

    28th Annual Maine Open Juried Art Show, with Jurors Donna McNeil, Executive Director, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Tim Christensen, Artist, and Olivia Fountain, Anne Lunder Leland Fellow, Colby College Museum of Art,

  • 2013 - I-95 Triennial—From Connecticut to Maine, University of Maine Museum of Art (UMMA), Bangor, ME (with Jurors Timothy McDowell, Professor of Art/Former Art Department Chair at Connecticut College and George Kinghorn, Director/Curator of UMMA; 34 artists from 5-state region)

Selected Group Exhibitions

  • 2019 - Selected Works, Littlefield Gallery, Winter Harbor, ME

  • 2018 - Art to Collect NOW—CMCA’s (Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s) Online Exhibition & Auction,

    Selected Works, Littlefield Gallery, Winter Harbor, ME

  • 2016 - Featured Artist @ Galerie Swanström, Miami Art Fair, Miami, FL

  • 2015, 2014, and 2013 - Art to Collect NOW — CMCA’s (Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s) Annual Benefit Exhibition & Auction, CMCA, Rockport, ME

  • 2009 - Mother—Celebration of MoMA Curator Mildred Constantine, Gallery @ 96 Main, Belfast, ME

  • 2008 - Treading Lightly: One Foot at a Time, Clifford Gallery, Waterfall Arts Center, Belfast, ME

  • 2006 - Shasta Daisy—Lessons of Muso Kokushi (72"x72"), Junior League of Boston Designers Showhouse, Cambridge, MA

  • 2005 - Three-person Exhibition (5 works), 38 Cameron, Cambridge, MA September-October 2003, Coreopsis—Lessons of Muso Kokushi (48"x48"), Elected-members-only Fall Show, Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge, MA

John Danosmarcleavitt