COLLECTOR'S FOCUS MARINE ART - Ships Ahoy

Rising 780 feet above the sea, Maine’s Mount Battie overlooks Camden Harbor and Penobscot Bay.

- JOHN O'HERN

Captain John Smith (1580-1631) explored the coast of Maine and Massachusetts in 1614 and named the region New England. He described the Camden Hills as “the high mountains of Penobscot, against whose feet doth beat the sea.” In the 19th century, Camden was a shipbuilding town. By the turn of the 20th century, its natural beauty attracted some of the wealthiest families in America who built “cottages” there and contributed generously to the cultural life of the town. It continues to be a much-loved resort town.

In 1912, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), who grew up in Camden, first recited her poem Renascence based on her experience of the view from Mount Battie. It begins:

All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked another way,

And saw three islands in a bay.

Colin Page writes, “Painting is how I share the poetry of experience.” His impressionistic View from Battie captures the scene visually and is about “where land and water meet….” He says his paintings “are about the colors along the coastline and…about how our waterfront engages land and sea. Whatever the subject, color and light are my main attraction to a scene as I start painting.”

The strong light on the bare rock of Mount Battie softens as it reflects off the buildings and boats of Camden Harbor and scintillates on the surface of the water of the bay.

Like Page, Kevin Beers is “from away,” having been born elsewhere but having settled in Maine. Both have embraced the variety of its beauty and its extraordinary light, which they celebrate in their paintings.