Pat Taub
If you’re looking for inspiration in tackling a new artistic venture or reviving a project, then The Painted Ladies of Portland, Maine is your ticket. Recently I sat down with the five remarkable artists who make up The Painted Ladies, curious to learn how they came together and how they support one another in their artmaking. For them, art at an advanced age gives new meaning to life.
We met in Emily’s gracious art and antique-filled living room, flanked by her cohorts: Diana, Carol, Sandy, and Ann. I was welcomed warmly, grateful for the open manner in which these five women shared their stories.
While most of the women were creating art while employed, retirement presented an opportunity to focus on their art full time. The women met in 2016 while enrolled in continuing ed art classes at Portland’s art college, MECA (Maine College of Art and Design). In 2020 when Covid hit, canceling in-person classes, the group formed out of a desire to continue meeting in the only format available: Zoom.
Five years later, The Painted Ladies, who took their name from the brightly colored Victorian homes of the same name, continue to meet twice a week on Zoom where they paint for the first hour and then reconvene to share their work and engage in mutual critiques.
Painted Ladies homes in San Francisco
Their critiquing is both supportive and instructive, employing a style that often begins with the question, “How can I help you?” One member reflected, “I feel both supported and inspired.”
The Painted Ladies represent a variety of styles. Emily favors oil-based still lifes of food, explaining that two of her great passions are feeding people and painting food. Her food still lifes hang in charming groupings in her kitchen. Emily also paints landscapes of the Maine outdoors, capturing the changing seasons. Her colors are warm and inviting.
One of Emily’s signature food studies
Ann is an acrylic artist with an undergraduate degree in art and an advanced art degree from USM in Portland. She paints brightly colored, poetic landscapes inspired by the changing seasons and outdoors captured from her country home. This past summer she and Carol attended an art workshop in Provence.
Landscape by Ann
Carol both paints and photographs. Her painting subjects are birds, personalities, landscapes and abstractions. A current photography project is taking black and white photos of old dolls which she hunts down at flea markets. Frequently these dolls have a haunting look. Carol draws the comparison between old discarded dolls and the plight of older women in our society who are often cast off or put on the shelf.
One of Carol’s paintings
Diana became serious about her painting after her famous artist mother died, who has a piece in the Museum of Modern Art’s archives. While Diana described her mother as encouraging her art, she found herself too inhibited around her to allow her art to take off. Now it has. Her abstract paintings soar in their free expression, evoking strong emotions. Diana commented, “My work is about finding my truth . . . using light to illuminate the darkness of silence.” When she reflected, “Painting gives me energy,” heads nodded in agreement.
Abstract of Diana’s
While Sandy called herself “the matriarch of the group,” she may be the most energetic painter in the collective, remarking, “I paint every day.” Sandy’s daily art schedule is in contract to some of the other group members, like Emily and Carol who admitted to finding it difficult to paint in our newly ushered in dark politics.
Recent painting by Sandy
Sandy has a Master of Fine Arts from Louisiana State University, where she gained enrollment after initially being turned down because she lacked a portfolio. Indicative of her “can do spirit,” she went home, produced some drawings, returning with them the next day, gaining admission, Sandy’s subject matter is a microscopic look at the world, sometimes in the style of hyperrealism or abstraction.
The Painted Ladies embody George Eliot’s advice: “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
