The opening of the Elizabeth Moss Gallery in Falmouth, Maine, in the beginning of 2004 was the culmination of a fifteen-year love affair with Maine, its rugged physical beauty, its deep intellectual tradition, and, most importantly, its strong contribution to 20th century American art. When gallery owner Elizabeth Moss Civiello first came to Maine while living in Washington, D.C., she ventured out to Monhegan Island, a bastion of art for over one hundred years. There she fell in love—with the island and also with her future husband, the son of Henry Kallem, one of Monhegan's mainstay artists for over fifty years.

Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth began her formal training at George Washington University in the Master of Arts—Museum Studies program, with a focus on 20th century American art. In her study, Elizabeth learned the importance of the academic establishment in art. During a summer position as assistant to the sculpture conservator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (part of the Smithsonian Institution), Elizabeth discovered a love not only of art study but of art immersion—she learned that she loved being close to art. At the same time, being around works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Hans Hoffman, and Wilhelm DeKooning, she also discovered a passion for abstraction.

Following completion of her Masters, Elizabeth transplanted herself to Portland, Maine. For seven years, she worked as a private dealer handling the art of Henry Kallem, which she inherited through his estate. During this time, Elizabeth learned more about Henry Kallem, his contemporaries in the Modern Art movement in America, and Maine's vital role in American art at large.

Maine, particularly Monhegan Island, has long had a history in American art. Artists have come to the state to paint its intoxicating natural beauty since the second half of the 19th century. Maine offers a unique canvas for artists—an unrivaled, dramatic coastline constantly undulating with bays, islands, and peninsulas. Early in the 20th century, artists who lived in Maine year-round and artists who summered here year after year became a regular part of the state's artistic heritage. These artists were primarily landscape and marine artists who worked in a representational style growing out of the classical European tradition. They included Robert Henri, his student Rockwell Kent, Kent's cousin Alice Kent Stoddard, Andrew Winter, N.C. Wyeth, John Marin, Maurice Sterne, Niles Spencer, Stefan Hirsch, Georgia O'Keefe, Walt Kuhn, Bernard Karfiol, Jay Connaway, Abraham J. Bogdanove, Alfred Fuller, Leon Kroll, Eric Hudson, George Bellows, Winslow Homer, Charles Woodbury, Paul Dougherty, Emil Carlsen, Peter Blume, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Ivan Albright, Marguerite Zorach, and James Fitzgerald, as well as sculptors such as William Zorach, Gaston Lachaise, and Robert Laurent, among others.

By mid-century, the horizon of Maine's artist colonies broadened, with the coming of a group of abstract painters from New York City. These artists had found their roots in the Works Progress Acts enacted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to create public works programs as a massive employment effort in the wake of the war. The same artists who had received commissions for public billboards, advertisements, and murals for the government were now forging ahead into the area of abstraction. These artists, many of whom had New York studios and summered on Monhegan to paint and share their ideas, dominated the art scene on the island for the next thirty years. With a core of a couple dozen members, they included Henry Kallem, Herbert Kallem, Joseph DiMartini, Ted Davis, Zero Mostel, Reuben and Geraldine Tam, Remo Farruggio, Frances Schafer, Ernest Hekking, Leo Meissner, Alex and Natalie Minewski, John Hultberg, Nick Luisi and Michael Loew, among others. Other artists working in Maine at this time included Andrew Wyeth, William Kienbusch, Henry Strater, the Zorachs, Robert Laurent, Waldo Pierce, Henry Varnum Poor, Carl Sprinchorn, Herman Roessler, Zsissly (Malvin Albright), Bernard Langlais, Thomas Fransioli, Stephen Etnier, Stephen Pace, John Muench, Hans Moller, Leo Brooks and many more.

It is the art that has thrived in Maine in the 20th century, particularly in the middle of the century, that the Elizabeth Moss Gallery shows. Since April 2004, the Elizabeth Moss Gallery has featured art from Maine's landscape and marine artists working out of the European tradition following World War I – Alice Kent Stoddard, Jay Hall Connoway, Eric and Jacqueline Hudson, James Cook, Elmer Rising, Cadwallader Washburn, Sears Gallagher, Albert Poole, James Fitzgerald, Abraham Bogdanove, Mitchell Hager and Alice Kent Stoddard, the New York artists exploring abstraction following World War II Henry Kallem, Stephen Pace, Remo Farruggio, Lawrence Goldsmith, Jan McCartin, Reuben Tam, Lynne Drexler, Elena Jahn, Olga Sears, John Hultberg and Zero Mostel and also contemporary artists working representational and abstract styles in Maine today Stephen Lanzalotta, Julie Freund, Margarite Ryan, Carol Sloane, Carol Raybin, David Little, Don Stone (N.A.), Caleb Stone, John Kimball, John LeBlanc, Dyan Fitzpatrick. Future shows will include art by Reuben and Geraldine Tam, Lynne Drexler, Eric Hudson, Mary Vining, Henry Kallem, Don Stone, Caleb Stone, Joan Rappaport, Carol Raybin, John LeBlanc, Terry Hilt, Lawrence Goldsmith, James Fitzgerald and other artists of the Monhegan tradition.