FREEPORT — The world of Dahlov Ipcar at the Frost Gully Gallery is filled with animals prancing across the canvas, overlapping images, color and joy in life. Still painting at 98, Ipcar is an artist whose imagination is fresh and vibrant in her characteristic style which focuses on animals in action. Although her eyesight is fading due to macular degeneration, each painting still has a wonderful visual story to tell.

Ipcar paints every day and listens — with her calico cat, “Chelsea Girl,” — to MPBN radio every morning at breakfast to be up on the news.  “I listen to MPBN because it gives you so much information straight forward,” the artist said in a recent interview.

Ipcar’s mind is crystal clear as she navigates independently in her white farmhouse on Georgetown Island. Her home is situated on a hill overlooking an apple orchard.

She has worked on her art for her current exhibit at the Frost Gully Gallery for the last two years. There are 40 works in the exhibit, including seven rare drawings from 1945 and 1946. The exhibit covers works created throughout her career into 2015.  Sixteen new works,  painted during the last two years, are featured in the exhibit.

An exciting, new work in the exhibit is “Tigers of Rewa 2,” an oil on linen (2014) which depicts two tigers — a yellow one and white one —  exploring space. A bright-aqua background with streams of yellow light interwoven into suggested shapes looks like a beacon of light shining on the animals.

Another new work, “Antelope Families- Tanzania,” (2014), an oil on linen, depicts three different levels of land with grazing antelopes on each level. Ipcar loves a wide variety of antelopes and they can be seen in many of her works. A new work, located near the entrance of the exhibit, is titled “Pronghorn Antelope-Swift- Fox Race,” oil on linen (2015). The painting unites warm colors of yellow and orange. It has less detail than her earlier works, but captures her vibrant use of color and a feeling of ongoing action. The total effect of this work is one of life and activity in Africa.

Though the animals of the African continent are ubiquitous in her works, Ipcar said she has not traveled there. “I am a mental traveler,” the artist said.

As a child, Ipcar spent winters in Greenwich Village, N.Y.,  and summers in Maine. She would take the subway into the New York Public Library to see all the exotic animals in their natural settings in books there. This experience influenced her drawings and paintings of animals. Her parents, William and Marguerite Zorach, were artists and they encouraged her creativity in their home. A frieze of animals, which she painted in her childhood, hangs on the border of her bedroom ceiling in the family home in Maine.

A small, lovely work,  hung on the staircase wall of the gallery, is “Winter Chipmunk,” an oil on canvas (2015). It depicts a close study of a chipmunk in mid-air, chasing over a pine branch. His graceful body moving quickly across the land is a sight frequently seen in our natural Maine environment. 

“Blue Moon Dance,” an oil on linen (2014), is a large, remarkable painting with intricate patterns.  It is like her earlier works, with many animal figures in motion, tightly overlapping each other, a characteristic of her style. “I have done a series on the topic of a blue moon. It is a fantasy I recall in my mind, from time to time, and comes from the familiar phrase, ‘Once in a Blue Moon,’ ” Ipcar said.  

Seven early drawings created in 1945 and 1946 are very interesting and show Ipcar’s  love of animals. Two cloth sculptures are in the exhibit; one, titled  “Orange and Black Fish 1,” hangs near the staircase in the gallery and the other is titled “Blue Wildebeest,” and is displayed on a pedestal under glass.

This huge exhibit on two floors was beautifully hung by Charlie Ipcar, the artist’s son, Stephanie Helms and Rachel Walls. Each work has ample white space around it and expert lighting. Ipcar works can be seen lining the walls of the staircase as well as in the second floor gallery.

In addition to Ipcar’s work, the exhibit includes a few paintings by Tom Crotty, who founded the Frost Gully Gallery in 1966. Crotty, the Clint Eastwood of the art community in Maine, was a well-known artist in the state and an important art dealer. He was instrumental in showing Ipcar’s work  for more than five decades. Crotty died last summer. In an interview at the gallery, Ipcar said about Crotty: “Tom’s death has been a great loss to all of us in the art world, especially to me, because I worked with him for almost 50 years. I learned a great deal from him.”

A wonderful self-portrait by Crotty, placed on an easel in his studio on the second floor, is poignant. His studio looks just like he left it, with a large, unfinished work on an easel. Crotty had confidence in Ipcar’s work before she became famous and was an important figure in her life. Therefore, the tribute to him with his studio open for the public to see with several of his works, is an important part of the Ipcar exhibit.

Ipcar was born in Vermont in 1917, and spent many summers on Georgetown Island, where her parents bought land in 1922. She married Adolph Ipcar, a school teacher, in 1936 in New York. The couple continued to spend summers on the family land in Maine. And when the Zorachs went back to New York in the fall, the Ipcars stayed on in Maine to run the farm. Many of the artist’s early children’s books and paintings were about farm life and everyday activities.

Ipcar is known for her 33 children’s books, which are in schools across the state. Her wonderful oil paintings, lithographs and beautiful cloth sculptures can be found in every important museum in the state. The total impact of the exhibit is bright, strong, cheerful and well hung.

Ipcar will be talking at 11 a.m., Sunday,  Nov. 22, at the Georgetown Historical Society.

The artist said she is looking forward to attending a major art exhibit in honor of her 100th birthday, which will also include her children’s books. The event will be held at the Portland Public Library in 2017. 

The Frost Gully Gallery will remain open until this Dec. 28, showing Ipcar’s work. From January through Memorial Day, A “Frost Gully Gallery and Friends” exhibit will display the gallery’s artists at the Thomas Moser Gallery, 149 Main St. The Frost Gully Gallery will reopen in June.

Frost Gully is open daily noon to 5 p.m., until Dec. 28. It is located at 1159 Route 1. For more information, call 207-865-4505. A beautiful exhibit catalogue, written by Rachel Walls, is available at the gallery.