Condron's Stillness Is the Move

Walking through Fells Point, I recently popped into the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Museum and checked out Stillness in Movement, an exhibit of Jim Condron paintings. Condron specializes in large oils of nature scenes, and a few of those pieces are on display. But the real gems here are his much smaller, more evocative paintings of harbor scenes just beyond the museum's walls.

Making the most of an impressionistic style, Condron, not surprisingly, captures the landscape's natural splendor, but he also finds beauty in its industrial elements. He makes you pause and refocus on a familiar environment, which he's infused with a distinctive aura and warmth. And that moment of stillness—the flash of recognition and pensive reappraisal—is what makes Condron's work so moving and worthwhile.

The exhibition runs through August 14.