Art and travel go hand in hand, which is one of the reasons I’m always happy when I can get back to Maine.

Akin to the sight of white pines backed by azure skies and the smell of salt in the air, many of Andrew Wyeth’s images speak to me as an indelible representation of the state where I grew up. PBS recently added an episode on Wyeth to their American Masters series; it’s quite good and addresses the often uneasy sense of mystery that hovers in the stark beauty and loneliness found in many of his paintings. I can’t speak to any connection those from Pennsylvania may feel toward his Chadds Ford work, but for me, Wyeth got Maine exactly right.

Although I visited the outside of the Olson house (the forbidding clapboard farmhouse that anchors Wyeth’s iconic Christina’s World) as a child, one can now see the inside as well thanks to the Farnsworth Art Museum assuming ownership in the early 1990’s.

The ‘tour’ that comes with admission is really a half-hour history of the house and its generations of inhabitants — a single family line — told to wonderful effect by a local docent. With dramatic pauses and a spooky affect that gave the impression of a cross between a no-nonsense schoolmarm and a wicked witch, she relayed how the original settlers were descendents of John Hathorne, the notorious chief justice of the Salem witch trials. They came to Maine in the 1700’s seeking to escape the tainted shadow Hathorne left upon the family name. Our docent capitalized on that air of eeriness with tales that encompassed deprivation, childhood death, and of course Christina’s disability.

Afterward we were free to roam the house which has remained as it was when Christina and her brother Alvaro lived there, and as it appears in many of Wyeth’s paintings. It’s an other-worldly experience walking into rooms that are hauntingly familiar, immersed in the same sense of place and light depicted by Wyeth, looking through the frames of windows he depicted to the views he recorded with a combination of faithfulness and artistic license.

Much has been said about Wyeth’s place in the lexicon of American painting, and I’m not going to debate that here. For me, his superior draughtsmanship, emotionally charged brevity, and compositional fluency negate any question of merit. But beyond those attributes, his paintings speak to a sense of Maine that anyone with a strong connection to the state would recognize, a quality that makes his work so intimately relatable.

If you’d like to dig a little deeper on the subject, let me recommend Christina Baker Kline’s novel A Piece of the World, a wonderful first-person portrayal of Christina Olson’s life inspired by her circumstances and her relationship with Andrew and Betsy Wyeth.

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On a more contemporary note, I was thrilled to walk into the Archipelago Store and Gallery of the Island Institute in Rockland and to discover an exhibit of wonderful paintings of lobstermen by Abe Goodale. On his website Goodale notes this series, the Eastern Waters project, is a tribute to the hardworking lobstermen of Penobscot Bay and that he “set out to capture a way of life, a generation upon the water and an industry that is thriving, yet fragile”. I think it’s remarkable how sensitively he portrays the toughness surrounding these men and their work.
I regret the quality of my photos is so poor.

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And finally, because I believe censorship is wrong, I am sharing a link to textile artist Salley Mavor’s recent story of being forced, ten days before the opening,  to withdraw from her solo exhibition Liberty and Justice: New Artwork by Salley Mavor. The show had been in coordinated planning for a year.

In relating the circumstances, Mavor is careful not to cast aspersions on the organization/venue, its staff or volunteers. I truly hope you will take the time to read what she has to say. It is not a political rant, it is a measured response to where we find ourselves in society today. She says, “For me, the work is about stepping away from a safe, sheltered existence and into a very real reality, one where there is possibility for action toward making a difference in the world.”
I want to honor her request that links to her work be shared in order for it to be seen. Maybe you will too. It is so important that we work together to subvert censorship and support artistic freedom.

Regardless of your political stance , please take the time to explore Mavor’s website. Her work is beautiful, and if you share a love of nature, I’m sure you will find it both magical and delightful. Her creativity and skill with a needle are remarkable.

Many thanks to Eve Jacobs-Carnahan for bring this to my attention.