The Art Lover's Guide to Collecting Fine Art in Maine

Portland’s Eastern Promenade. Photo by Corey Templeton.

Way, way up in the northeastern most part of the United States is the coastal state of Maine, sharing most of its border with New Brunswick, Canada, and the Atlantic Ocean. The state exudes nautical charm, idyllic fishing ports and stunning seascapes, with artists like Winslow Homer, Marsden Hartley, and particularly Andrew Wyeth known for their depictions of the Pine Tree State.

While artists and arts institutions are sprawled throughout the state, the popular downtown Portland area’s Arts District houses such institutions as the Maine College of Art, State Theatre, Portland Stage Company, the Maine Historical Society and the Museum of African Culture. Collectors can also browse galleries across downtown. The city also features the Portland Museum of Art, which has more than 18,000 artworks in its collection, from Andy Warhol and Homer to Louise Nevelson and Claude Monet.The historic district of Old Port located in Portland, Maine. Photo by Jennifer Kearns.In Brunswick, you’ll find the Bowdoin College Museum of Art; in Rockland, the Farnsworth Art Museum and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art; in Ogunquit, the Ogunquit Museum-American Art; and many others.

Collectors can also explore the works of such individual artists as Kevin Mizner in Pittston and Stephen Porter in Searsmont, both cities a skip and a hop to the coastline.

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Stephen Porter
50 Peters Road, Searsmont, ME 04973
(207) 589-4843, sporter@fairpoint.net
www.stephenporterstudio.com Stephen Porter, Circle 64, stainless steel, 23 x 27 x 18"

Stephen Porter, Cube Column 16, stainless steel, 47 x 14 x 12"

Three-dimensional artist Stephen Porter’s sculpture is based on a formal vocabulary of geometric shapes arranged in ordered configurations that contain the right sense of balance. Within these arrangements, the size, proportion and material or color of each of the elements combine to form three-dimensional structures that force one to respond to them as purely sculptural ideas conveying concepts of weight, tension, space and gravity. “These sculptures are not concerned with external subject matter and have no metaphor,” says Porter. “Their subject matter, rather, is their geometry. They are concerned with the harmony created by these relationships and are an attempt to create beauty in formal structures.”Stephen Porter, Circle 68, European beech,11 x 11 x 4"

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Kevin Mizner
1106 E. Pittston Road, Pittston, ME 04345
(207) 841-2580
kevmiz@roadrunner.com
www.kmizner.com

Kevin Mizner is a realist painter with more than 40 years of oil painting experience. “I want my viewers to do more than look at my paintings, I want them to feel as if they are a witness to a living scene,” says the artist. “I am very fortunate that Maine affords me the daily inspiration and experience I need to create my art. As a lover of nature, I am surrounded by some of America’s oldest farms, towns and homes, in many instances little changed over the years. These serve as backdrops for my landscape and figurative paintings.” Kevin Mizner, Engineers, oil on canvas, 20 x 20"

A view of Kevin Mizner’s studio in Pittston, Maine.

The artist has started a series of works called The Continuum Series. “Based on candid photos of Mainers from the early 20th century, I paint the scene in the black and white world some envision they lived in, and bring to life the person who best conveys an emotion that we all can connect with in full color. It’s my hope to show that regardless of when we may have lived and the style of clothes we wear, we are not so different from each other after all.”

Mizner is represented by Bayview Gallery in Brunswick, Maine, and Folly Cove Fine Art in Rockport, Massachusetts. He is currently showing in Maine Farmland Trust Gallery’s exhibition, 200 Years Of Maine Farming in Belfast, Maine. —