Rockland
Take an art focused tour of Rockland, a buzzing city with museums and galleries that belie its remote locale and small size.
On the wall of the farnsworth museum in downtown Rockland, a painting depicts a young artist with his easel propped on the rocks of a seashore. The incoming waves plume up from the rocks, threatening to drench the painter’s canvas. In front of his easel, only feet away, white water surges and churns into a pool. The artistreaches out his arm to dab paint onto his scene.
The work, Portrait of a Young Artist (1936), by the renowned American artist NC Wyeth, is of his son Andrew, who himself became an influential figure in American painting. The Wyeths were among a slew of US artists who looked to Maine’s rugged coastline and its outlying islands as a subject of infinite interest. ‘The artists’ sensitivity gives you a whole new way of looking at this place,’ says JC Dewing, who wears striped shirt, braces and a fisherman’s moustache, and greets visitors at the front desk. ‘Rockland was once a fishing town, butit’s becoming an arts town. Thiswas the vision of Lucy Farnsworth in the 1920s, and it has come to bear.’
Lucy Farnsworth was the child of a wealthy industrial investor, and donated most of her generous inheritance to establish the museum, which now has some 15,000 works in its collection. Around such a collection, a community of artists has grown up. The art at the Farnsworth casts a certain light on the surroundings, the timelessness and moodiness of the sea, the drama of the windswept land.
A block away stands the Centerfor Maine Contemporary Art, where muted afternoon light seeps in via floor to ceiling windows. On exhibit are steel sculptures made from forged and welded nails, a collection of still life and portrait photographs, and a life size, walk in installation of an artist’s studio that has been turned upside down by a roiling flood. What began in 1952 as an artists’ cooperative, presenting exhibits in barns and back rooms, is now the state’s preeminent contemporary arts organisation.
More than 20 galleries smatterthis quaint, quiet town that edges the shore. A local food co op, an independent bookshop, coffee shops, diners and cafés punctuate the relaxed streets with activity. Amateurs are learning to paint at the Art Loft, close to where a ferry scoots out into the bay, carrying passengers to Vinalhaven Island. The community art centre offers classes to members and drop ins who want to try their hand at figure drawing, mixed media collage, landscape painting andwatercolours.
A short way along the mouth of the St Georges River, past farm stands selling pumpkins, and apples falling in piles from roadside trees, past split rail fences and blooming woodland sunflowers, lies the Olson House. A 1700s saltwaterfarmhouse, this is where Andrew Wyeth painted and sought inspiration for nearly three decades, and it’s now a small outpost of the Farnsworth museum.
Gold tinged light streams into the 14 empty rooms, many of which are depicted in Wyeth’s works. There is something of the salt airin the old boards. From the window of a third storey bedroom, the view opens beyond the tall spruces, to the river pouring into the Muscongus Bay of the Atlantic Ocean. Here, ensconced in the peace of the wooden house, the ocean a pool of bright shimmerin the eyes, it’s easy to feel the tug that has held artists in thrall for centuries.