LOADING THE BOAT, oil on linen, 30x 40 inches 2017

        SAILING SCHOOL, oil on linen, 30x40inches, 2017

       THE TURNING TIDE, oil on linen 30x40 inches, 2017

       LOBSTER LADIES, oil on linen 30x40 inches, 2017

I’ve been creating paintings of Maine since I first started going there when Mom and Dad built a house on a beautiful lake, about 35 years ago.

Over that time, the experience of being there has taken on more and more significance in my life. It’s a place where the family comes together and we see how much the little nieces and nephews have grown each time, to become adults with children of their own.

         Four generations are now visiting the “camp” by the lake, swimming, boating and wind surfing. My Dad, who turns 99 on the first of August, watches the activity with satisfaction, seeing all the ripples from the pebble he threw into the pond all those years ago.

         Like all families, ours has been touched with sadness. My mother, Gibby, spent her last summer here five years ago and my brother, Brian, had a wonderful summer a year ago, in remission from brain cancer long enough to do the things he loved so much, wind surfing, swimming and spending time with his family.

         Somehow we go on, enjoying our lives, but now with the keen knowledge that they are very short. We have seen how short.

         So the golden mornings, having coffee on the deck overlooking the still waters, take on a meaning that I didn’t see back when everyone was with us and we were all so much younger. Roll back the years and look at the casual way we let time slide by. We were all going to live forever!

         In my art, I’ve been focusing on the Maine that seems timeless, yet is actually changing. I look for the things that speak to me in the language of Time:

A pair of older fishermen, loading their boat on a trailer as they have done a thousand times. A group of young girls walking briskly across the bridge on their way to sailing school. A painting of anchored lobster boats in Bass Harbor, turning around in the changing tide and one of a big red lobster boat, tied up at Hancock Point and run by two women in a painting I call “Lobster Ladies”

         I look at Maine and I see History.

Big blocks of granite standing on the beach at Great Harbor, used long ago to anchor sailing ships. Fragments of broken plates and sea glass in the rocky sand, give clues of a long-forgotten restaurant nearby.

I see history being made, too: the families hiking in Acadia Park, sitting down to lobster dinners, celebrating birthdays, remembering those who have passed.

In my quest to paint the Timeless, I am forced to consider that there is no such thing. In the sweep of our lives, the things that seem true, that seem real and worthwhile, these are things are worth remembering. It is in our memories that they become timeless.