WOOLWICH — Tom Paiement treats each of his paintings as a visual puzzle. Each, a riddle to be solved. Each, full of choices and possibilities.

The key to making the right choice, he said, is trusting his artistic impulse and not thinking too much.

Additional Images

Tom Paiement at home in Woolwich. Bob Keyes photo

“Merida Flower – 3.” Courtesy photo Courtesy photos

“Venice Beach Flower – 3.” Courtesy photo Courtesy photos

“Merida Flower – 13” Courtesy photo Courtesy photo

IF YOU GO

TOM PAIEMENT, “ONGOING EXPLORATION”

WHERE: Greenhut Galleries, 146 Middle St., Portland

WHEN: On view through Sept. 27; 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday

HOW MUCH: Free

INFO: 772-2693, greenhutgalleries.com, tompaiement.com

“It’s about making a mark,” Paiement said. “What I have found is that when you make that intuitive mark, people respond. So often, when people want to talk to me about my work, they go to the part of the painting that was most freely done.”

This month, Greenhut Galleries in Portland is showing 33 of Paiement’s mixed-media paintings, all produced from recent winter trips to southern California and the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico.

A common element between those locations is color. Paiement found himself excited by colors he’s rarely used before, particularly a shade of near-neon lime green.

Paiement’s paintings are more like constructions. He uses a variety of materials – small pieces of metal and wood, newspapers – and applies paint and ink.

This series, called “Ongoing Explorations,” continues an interest in flowers.

In February 2013, he and his wife, Maret Hensick, spent a month at Venice Beach in Los Angeles. They stayed a block from the beach.

The inspiration for this series was a vase of flowers placed on a concrete wall overlooking the beach. The colors of the flowers, the solid line of the wall and the open feeling of the horizon beyond captivated Paiement’s visual imagination. “It left me a lot of room internally,” he said.

This past winter, he and Hensick went to Mexico.

There it was the blending of colors, movement and form that triggered Paiement’s creative instincts. He paid attention to the iron filigree work in the city and the fluid line of graffiti plastered on the buildings. He responded to everything around him, opening his senses and absorbing it all.

“I drew every day from 8 in the morning until noon in the city park,” he said. “I was trying to get the movement of the people as they walked by, with a semblance of architecture and the trees,” he said.

Back home in Maine, he used his drawings as a basis for the finished work that’s hanging through Sept. 27 at Greenhut. Employing a variety of materials to construct his flowers and boardwalk scenes, Paiement aimed for blocky shapes and overlays, putting high value on gestures that felt right. He ripped and cut newspapers to shape a vase, made stems from wood and metal, and painted the flowers in resplendent greens and reds.

He didn’t think. He responded.

For Paiement, making art is about experimenting with materials to find a balance between impulse and analysis. He hopes people who view his work appreciate his instinctive gestures as well as the thought behind his craft.

Paiement was born in Brunswick in 1942. He remembers listening to the radio with his family, and using his imagination to picture a world beyond the small town that he knew.

He was a math and science kid, and studied mechanical engineering at the University of Maine. But he always had an instinct for art. In 1965, during the height of the hippie era, he packed up his Corvair and moved to California – to Venice Beach – where his “doors of perception” were thrown wide open. He made what he called “crude drawings” that he sold to help support himself.

“I made a living selling art,” he said. “It was enough to pay my rent. I drew Monday through Thursday, framed on Friday and sold on the street corners Saturday and Sunday. I would love to see those drawings today.”

He got serious about art after meeting the artist Mauricio Lasansky at the University of Iowa, where he later enrolled and earned a master’s degree in printmaking.

He returned to Maine in the late 1980s and began what is now a 25-year career as a working artist.

He and his wife live on 40 acres in Woolwich. Their home is set on a hill that overlooks a sloping forest of trees.

Whether it’s his hill in Woolwich, which will soon turn to a blaze of fall colors, or a simple vase of flowers on a balcony overlooking a beach in California, he is always composing in his mind, searching for the next idea that will propel his creative impulse forward.

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