River Arts in Damariscotta is hosting Debra Claffey’s dynamic solo show, “Reflections and Refractions,” through Aug. 27. A meet-the-artist reception is from 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 23.

Claffey’s oil, encaustic and mixed media paintings concentrate on abstracted plant and foliage forms as expressions of the human dilemma. Her experience in horticulture adds a scientific perspective to her aesthetic appreciation of the natural world.

Claffey’s paintings have been exhibited across New England and have won several awards, the most recent being a 2025 Recognition Award from Juror Toby Sisson at the Bristol Art Museum’s “Rock, Paper, Scissors” and the Juror’s Award from Joanne Mattera in “Anything But Flat” at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, in Truro, Massachusetts. Juror Katherine French recognized her work with an honorable mention in Catamount Art’s Arts Connect exhibition in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, in 2022. Claffey received two Artist Entrepreneurial Grants from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2011 and 2020. She won the Bank of New Hampshire Award in the 50th Annual Exhibition at the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire. Claffey currently teaches online and in her Maine studio.

“I use pattern and repetition to express appreciation and record memories of movement,” Claffey said in a prepared release. “My paintings — in oil, encaustic and mixed media — visualize my anxieties, fears and preoccupations with ecology, environment and our care for each other. The drawn line is a tracing of my roving eye, following the lively edge of an orchid leaf or fern bract. The paintings incorporate my use of drawing tools and carving or scraping into the surface for an expressive line.

“My experience in horticulture offers the plant kingdom as Muse, and it still nurtures me and keeps me moving. Using plants as a beginning point for drawing provides innumerable opportunities for direct perception of nature, and a deeper understanding of relationships while also sparking a lively discourse toward making a good and satisfying painting, even when the painting is about anxiety or loss.”

River Arts is located at 36 Elm St. in Damariscotta. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, call the gallery at 563-6868 or visit riverartsme.org.