San Francisco, California
Friday, December 12th, 2025
On Friday evening, the exhibition At the Edge of Light – Faces and Places of San Francisco, featuring the paintings of Bishop Maxim, opened at the Social Hall of St. John the Baptist Serbian Orthodox Cathedral in San Francisco. The event welcomed more than 100 visitors and presented 47 artworks, with over 35 paintings sold during the opening night.
The exhibition was formally opened by Melody Key and Fr. Djurica Gordic, whose remarks framed the evening as an encounter between art, place, and human presence. Guests moved attentively among the works, engaging in thoughtful conversation and returning often to the same paintings, as though entering into a dialogue with them.
The evening was further enriched by musical selections for piano and cello, beautifully performed by Bob Fowler (piano) and Biljana Bojovic (cello). Their music offered a contemplative backdrop, allowing sound and color to unfold together and deepen the atmosphere of the gathering.
The exhibition offered a rich and varied body of work comprising original acrylic paintings and mixed-media pieces that move fluidly between landscape, portrait, and symbolic vision. Visitors encountered luminous views of the San Francisco Bay and Pacific coast—from the Golden Gate at dawn, dusk, and fire-lit sunset to Sausalito, Monterey, Napa, and the northern cliffs—alongside mythic and spiritual compositions featuring angels, saints, Christ, mermaids, ships, wings, and symbolic still lifes. A gallery of portraits wove personal presence with place, portraying writers and artists such as Jack London, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Frida Kahlo, Janis Joplin, and Isadora Duncan, as well as civic and historical figures including Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, Sebastian Dabovich, St. John of San Francisco, and Francis of Assisi, alongside contemporary Bay Area personalities and intimate figures set within the city’s light, fog, and rhythm. Many works were created as collaborations, all unified by a post-Byzantine chromatic language and a contemplative vision of San Francisco as a living icon.
Bishop Maxim’s paintings reveal the city not as a static image but as a living organism—where landscape and face, history and presence, the visible and the spiritual meet. The strong response from visitors affirmed the exhibition’s resonance not only as an artistic event, but as a shared moment of reflection and community.
On the occasion of the opening, a beautifully produced monograph of the exhibition was shared with all attendees, offering a lasting record of the works and extending the evening’s experience beyond the gallery space.
The night concluded in a spirit of gratitude and quiet joy, bearing witness to the enduring power of art to gather people, invite contemplation, and reveal light at the edge of everyday life.