Why Maine? Why rural Maine?
In February of 2020, I moved permanently back home to Maine’s Mid-Coast. To make it official, we dug a big hole in the side of a hill for a house and art studio. I overlook a “great” pond, one of the state’s literally thousands of lakes.
My view includes Ragged Mountain, at least, on a clear day.
30 plus years of adulting in big cities could have made for a tough transition. Whatever. Four weeks later, the governor shut down New York City.
A beginning…
My mother’s family is primarily from the coast of Maine, but we also have loggers and farmers in the family that live/d inland. She was born in Rockland, a well-known coastal town that more than doubles in size during the summer. Thanks to my transient existence in 2019-2020 while my house was being built—my alternating between the Northeast and my cousins’ farm in Maine—I learned a lot about family and, specifically, my grandparents.
You can discover all kinds of things about your family when the evening’s entertainment is a bottle of pinot noir (my mother’s favorite), home cooking, and Rummikub. For example, I learned that there’s some history involving rum-running with my gram’s houseboat and that grandfather “Clarky” lost a toe while freight-hopping to Texas to start of all things an onion farm. Well, now, at least, I know where I got my entrepreneurial DNA.
So, that was the mother of all digressions.
My point is that there was some rhyme and some reason behind moving to rural Maine. And, it wasn’t the Pandemic. Granted my brain would like to think that it’s solely in control, but the sticking power behind the idea was rooted in deeper origins.
After my father passed in 2012, the trips north to visit family increased significantly. Originally, I’d accompany my mother, often with my young niece, for a week or two each summer. We’d pick our way up the coast and ultimately stop at a small town in Knox County, about 25 miles inland from Rockland. Here, you can feel—often smell and taste—the sea breeze coming in from the Atlantic. You can credit those spectacular sunrises to proximity to the ocean.
Mom’s nephew married into the family who has lived on the 80-something acres since the late-19th century. This cousin and I now routinely discuss what divine authority could deem it even remotely appropriate for our sorry little asses to have won the lottery of getting to live here….
Last digression. My apologies.
To continue, my visits to the farm increased in number and days. Two weeks in the summer became five, then eight. My mom would return to New Jersey, and I’d stay. I think my cousins guessed my sincerity when I started showing up in February, giddy at the thought of being snowbound. I’d return to Brooklyn and become depressed. More significant, I found that I could no longer paint in my Brooklyn home.
The distinction between “place” and “land” is a lot more significant than we’re led to believe. Place is our construct. We build place, name it, and wrap our stories around it. Land couldn’t give a f**k about such things.
I distinctly remember the sensation of being part of the land. More than five years ago, at the tail end of August. And, long before I could fathom living in Maine full time.
I was a little more than 48 hours out from having to board a train back to NYC, the absolute minimum time required for my paintings to dry sufficiently to ship them home. I had painted until the last good light had given out, then cleaned my brushes, scraped my palette, and sat on the side of the steep hill leading down to the pond.
Maybe you’ve seen Andrew Wyeth’s painting “Christina’s World”? The line of my body followed a similar sinewy path as Christina’s. I felt my hip pressed into the ground and my nails into the dirt.
Behind me, the sun was still in the process of leaving. The reflected light over the water glowed more than shone. You could make out faint stars in the blueberry-colored sky. Think on that metaphor about ants on a spinning rock. I felt similarly small and big, both at the same time. Not inconsequential but, rather, a small part of something that extended millions of miles below and above.
The beginning…
Eventually, as in months and years later, it occurred to me that any land capable of holding you like that, you shouldn’t leave.
Like, ever.
More about Colette
Colette Taber’s paintings are included in private collections around the world. Her extensive travel throughout Western and Eastern Europe and North Africa has influenced both subject matter and the range of her viewing and reading audience.
Ms. Taber attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1995 with a B.A. in Fine Arts and English Literature from The School of Arts and Sciences.