Acadia
20 in. x 20 in., acrylic on canvas
$650 framed
This is a fairly large piece. It needed to be.
Unless I'm in the White Mountains, Maine always feels so much more wild than New Hampshire. Yet, because I've spent so much time there, it's so much like home. In fact, geologically, it's much closer to New Hampshire than Vermont, which is made of very different stuff. That's obvious just by crossing to the Shire-esque west bank of the Connecticut River. No, Maine is largely made of great slabs and piles of igneous granite just like New Hampshire, along with pine needles and sand banks and brushy barrens and swamp maples and oak groves and clover-covered fields. But the interaction of granite cliffs and salt water is what makes Maine so different from New Hampshire. We've ruined our meager 18 miles of coastline with ugly traffic tangles, shops and arcades and sidewalks with parking meters that would steal one of your kidneys for payment if they could (I won't apologize for excoriating whatever leaders of state and coastal towns for overdeveloping it into abject ugliness... fight me, shameful scoundrels). But Maine has managed to keep bit and bridle firmly attached to the would-be ravishers of much of its coastal natural spaces, and for that I'm thankful.
I hope you like this piece of coastal Maine, with its tenacious, weathered conifer trees, its wildly changing skies and unrelenting tides. A dear friend camped near here with her family and graciously allowed me to paint from what she captured while she was in Acadia National Park.
Photo reference courtesy Kate Goodin