How does landscape painting transcend its genre to become something so intensely visceral that it overwhelms and confronts in a way that is consummately modern? Answers to this question are resplendently on display in two solo shows devoted to the work of painter Nicole Wittenberg: “A Sailboat in the Moonlight” at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art (through July 20) and “Cheek to Cheek” at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland (through Sept. 14).

Wittenberg splits her time between New York City and Camden. All these paintings, however, draw solely from the landscapes of Maine. She is no blushing flower (an idiomatic expression that gains particular resonance at the CMCA). Her paintings embody a “take no prisoners” approach to her medium — unequivocal, in your face and at times even aggressive. If in the first seconds their assertiveness doesn’t send you running for cover, you will find yourself vanquished into ecstatic submission by color, scale and perspective.

At Ogunquit, the seduction begins subtly in one gallery lined with her small pastels. Captured quickly in deeply saturated color, chalky texture and sketchy mark making, they have a spontaneity and energy that transmits the atmospheric phenomena they are depicting (quickly moving clouds, moonlight snagged in the liquid troughs of rippling water, dappled sunlight reaching us through trees).

In the main gallery overlooking Perkins Cove, however, Wittenberg has ramped up the stakes. Responding to the magnificence of the landscape and the architecture of the room, these massive works focus on woodland scenes. We are sort of ready for them, since we’ve already seen pastel studies for some of them in the former gallery. But nothing could truly prepare us, really, for their impact.

Finding that the larger paintings did not do justice to the vivid color saturation of the pastels, Wittenberg primed her canvases with orange and — in the case of another gallery featuring her nocturnes — red. We will recall “For Gaia,” an immense painting of a copse of old-growth pines, from its more diminutive pastel incarnation, “The Crown,” in the former gallery. Other than sharing the same composition, however, the two could hardly be more dissimilar. The latter feels majestic despite its small scale and conveys the sense of age in the volumetric depiction of its thick trunks. But the former seems in motion with its loose, charged brushstrokes, its bows blowing in the wind, and practically on fire with the flashes of brilliant orange that burst through the spaces between the trees. The perspective here also feels looming and powerful in a way the pastel could only hint at.

The ”Buck Moon 2” pastel introduces the moonscape idea in the former gallery. But in the space devoted to nocturnes, a painting like “Broken Moon Study” takes on a hot, sulphureous air thanks to the blood red base layer. And again, the vigorous gestural nature of Wittenberg’s lively strokes magnifies the sense of movement, giving us an unforgettable expression of a tumultuous sea at sunset.

The almost terrifying awesomeness Wittenberg evokes here can be traced to a long legacy of sublime landscapes dating back to Jacob van Ruisdael, through Caspar David Friederich and Joseph Mallard William Turner, and on to Albert Bierstadt. All of these painters — Wittenberg included — understood the startling and unfathomable force of nature. But she also shares affinities with the brash color palettes of the Fauves and the German expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. In fact, it would be incredible to see Kirchner’s landscapes juxtaposed with Wittenberg’s.

All these elements — massive scale, pulsating color, restless intimation of motion — are also present at the CMCA exhibition. As with Ogunquit, Wittenberg created works specifically for the space. What she does with that space, given the vastness of its proportions, achieves something even more monumental. Her tallest painting is 11 feet, the longest almost 15 feet.

Rather than landscapes, however, the paintings in “Cheek to Cheek” are all based on photos of hydrangeas and climbing roses snapped along roadsides in Midcoast Maine. If the paintings at Ogunquit felt potently alluring in the way they sucked us into their fantastically colored worlds, these flowers explode forth into the gallery from shallow grounds. Wittenberg painted many of them in the runup to the Presidential election, a time of such fractious toxicity that it made her feel claustrophobic, pessimistic and helpless.

In this context, we can read them as extreme reactions to the compression of psychic space she felt was closing in. The blossoms are gigantic, so much so that Wittenberg used brooms to paint them. They are also in motion, but in a way more akin to Baroque painting in their vertiginous whirling gesture and voluptuous palette. This derives from time spent in Venice, where she worked near the Chiesa della Madonna dell’Orto, the parish and resting place of Tintoretto, which houses dynamic biblical paintings by this master.

Tintoretto’s pinks and blues take on another dimension here, however — less celestial and powdery than emotional and profoundly chromatic. The Baroque motion here, too, expresses itself through the lens of abstract expressionism, specifically action painting, where we can feel in the gesture Wittenberg’s whole body arching and thrusting.

These works emit sensuality and life force in a way that approaches the energy of shakti, the Hindu power and force that is often expressed as the divine feminine. But there are many other layers too. The titles of the shows are from songs of old 1930s films, invoking remembrance of more carefree times, as well as the era of the silver screen. “A Sailboat in the Moonlight” was a Billie Holiday song. These paintings are, in fact, cinematic, like Panavision for the canvas. And they speak of Maine as a respite from the frenetic city that offers regeneration and experiences of purity in nature.

Jorge S. Arango has written about art, design and architecture for over 35 years. He lives in Portland and can be reached at jorge@jsarango.com. This column is supported by The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “A Sailboat in the Moonlight”
WHERE: Ogunquit Museum of American Art, 543 Shore Rd., Ogunquit
WHEN: Through July 20
HOURS: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily
ADMISSION: $15 adults, $13 seniors and students, members and children under 12 admitted free
INFO: 207-646-4909, ogunquitmuseum.org

WHAT: “Cheek to Cheek”
WHERE: Center for Maine Contemporary Art, 21 Winter St., Rockland
WHEN: Through Sept. 14
HOURS: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday
ADMISSION: Free for Rockland residents, members and children under 18; $10 general; $8 senior and students
INFO: 207-701-5005, cmcanow.org