ROCKPORT — Midcoast artist Jean Kigel will be exhibiting a show of watercolor paintings at the Rockport Public Library, March 4 - 28.

“Displacement: Immigrant Portraits” is a collection of eleven timely paintings that will be traveling to various venues throughout the state of Maine in 2026. The portraits are accompanied by researched commentaries about immigration.

"The portraits give a humanizing face to displacement — revealing anguish, determination, despair, and hope," said a Rockport library news release.

Displaced by war, famine, persecution, pandemic, climate change, corrupt regimes, and economic collapse, millions of immigrants have left their home countries to come to the United States. Kigel reminds those viewing her art that immigrants “have always made up a valuable part of our country’s labor force and intellectual leadership.”

Jean Kigel is an artist who lives in Waldoboro. She is a member of the Union of Maine Visual Artists and the Sumi-e Society of America. Her work has been shown in midcoast Maine, Manhattan, Newburyport, and the American Embassies in Amman, Jordan, and Paris, France.