Beginning in 1998, our Freeport Showroom and Gallery has proudly showcased the work of Maine Artists. This partnership has grown into a celebrated community of artists. To tell a deeper story behind selected artists and art, we hope this monthly series of Q & A’s will bring a moment of beauty to your home and invite you to experience their work in person.
For our inaugural feature, it seemed only fitting that we celebrate the work of an artist in our backyard. This month, we sat down with Freeport, Maine artist Liz Prescott.
The work currently on display in Freeport is part of my ongoing reflection series. I enjoy the metaphors I explore with the theme of reflections and the openness of interpretation. Each painting can be about interior and exterior worlds, or perhaps, simply a foray into abstraction, a treat for the eyes. I have always been drawn to Rorschach ink studies, where what first appears as a mirror image, in fact, is not. We all see it differently. There are so many levels of interpretation in the water, allowing for a vibrant painting experience. It gets me very excited to go to the studio each day to see what I can discover
Boat rides with family to get dinner, seeing the old warehouse walls and fishing boats reflected and melding together on the Portland waterfront inspired this current body of work. Also, creating as a child greatly influenced my course through life. I was born in Providence, Rhode Island where my parents were art students. As a child, my mother provided me with an endless supply of markers, colored pencils, watercolors, stamps, and crafts projects.Â
My grandmother had a Seurat pointillist reproduction hanging in her living room that I would stare at as a child, entranced by the little bits of color one beside the other and how it added up to something greater. My mother was influenced by the Abstract Expressionists in the ’50s and ’60s: Hans Hoffman’s push and pull theories and Robert Rauschenburg’s collage/assemblages. I loved the juxtaposition of loose paint and recognizable imagery in Rauschenberg’s work. Realism and the materiality of paint were both fascinating to me. At art school, I studied the work of Richard Diebenkorn and the San Francisco Bay Area painters.
So, I definitely have art in my blood! Still, it took too many years to come to a place where I felt comfortable pursuing art as a career.
Maine, especially the coastline, is full of my current subject matter, wherever I look. Going out on the boat in Casco Bay and around the Portland docks, the Rockland docks, and Freeport where I live, I find enormous inspiration. This year, I have been drawn to the marinas, where all the colorful boats contrast with neutral docks and bright spots from buoys, etc. Sometimes this subject matter can seem too easy and overdone here in Maine. I don’t want it to be so much about the boats, but how I see and interpret them in the water. I am also drawn to farm fields and mountains for inspiration if I’m away from the coast. Maine is a feast for the eyes.
I found there is not as big an audience in Maine for abstraction, and having a whole pile of paintings come back after a show was an awakening. It helped me to understand why I paint. Am I painting to sell or for a more profound experience? Ultimately, it’s for me. The abstract show helped me realize I want to connect to an audience. I seem to have found that sweet spot currently, on the edge of realism and abstraction. It’s that middle ground where people respond to my work, and it also feeds me.
For me, a painting is rarely, if ever, done in one sitting. It simply takes time. Time to let it gestate, see it anew, tweak areas, and finesse the color and the brush stroke. For me, color interaction is foremost. It dictates emotion and where I want the eye to be drawn.Â
Also, the paint handling-I like to explore what the paint is doing as a material. When I walk into the studio and go, “Yes, that is right,” then it is at a good resting point to be called “finished.” There are many points throughout the process where it can be considered finished. In time, I have learned to be patient and wait for that sweet spot.
Our current show: The Art of Light and Water, will be on display until January 31, 2022, at the Freeport Showroom and Gallery. Click here for more information regarding the artists featured in this show and upcoming events at the showroom.
