Maine artists have been helping to tell stories for a very long time.

N.C. Wyeth brought the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem “The Courtship of Myles Standish” to life with his illustrations in 1920. Rockwell Kent lent his signature style to some lively art for an edition of the epic novel “Moby-Dick” in 1930.

Today, Maine illustrators create art for children’s books, magazines, album covers, comic books and a host of other media. The common theme is that they all help tell a story.

“My definition of an illustration, and it’s for people to debate, is that it’s visual art that supports a simple narrative,” said Scott Nash, an illustrator of children’s books and other works and co-founder of Portland’s Illustration Institute. “It doesn’t really make sense unless it’s connected to a story, enhances a story, but I welcome other opinions.”

Nash and the Illustration Institute are giving art lovers plenty of fodder for those opinions in the form of a new exhibit. “The Great State of Illustration in Maine” features the works of 78 Maine illustrators covering the last 100 years and is on view at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk, now through Feb. 26.

A “Moby Dick” book illustration by Rockwell Kent from 1930 is on view now at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk. Image courtesy of private collection.

Nash and his wife, illustrator Nancy Gibson-Nash, founded the Illustration Institute about six years ago to raise people’s appreciation of illustration in its many forms. The institute runs a variety of programs, organizing workshops and exhibits like this one. Last year around Halloween, it put on an exhibit called “Illustrated Monsters by Monster Illustrators” at the Portland Public Library. It featured the work of 32 local and national illustrators providing their interpretation of what a monster can be.

The current exhibition has a more narrow focus on Maine – illustrators who live or lived here – but a wider focus in terms of time. The exhibit lets viewers look at the works of Wyeth or Rockwell done to accompany classic literature in the early 20th century, a time when so many great novels were illustrated and the illustrations part of the reader’s journey.

But alongside those images are the works of more contemporary artists, like a cover image by Portland illustrator Lewis Rossignol done for the 2019 album “Igor” by rapper Tyler, the Creator. While the book illustrations of Wyeth and Rockwell are black and white and fairly simple, Rossignol’s image is full of color and shapes and has a much less literal feel.

This illustration from Isabella Rotman’s 2020 comic “Like the Tide,” is part of the exhibit “The Great State of Illustration in Maine.” Image courtesy of Isabella Rotman

Also in the show is an image by cartoonist and illustrator Isabella Rotman from her 2020 comic “Like the Tide.” It shows a woman swimming, her head above water but her body clearly visible beneath the waves. Former Maine College of Art teacher Jamie Hogan’s contribution to the show is a colorful and evocative scene from her 2021 children’s book “Skywatcher.”

There’s some mid-20th century history, too, in the show, with a stylistic 1955 poster representing the coastal town of Stonington. It was done by Francis Hamabe, a noted artist whose cartoons had appeared in The New Yorker and who became the first art director for Down East magazine, founded in 1954.

Gibson-Nash has a work of hers in the show, an image that evokes a pinball machine or some old arcade game called “The Slang of Summer,” done to accompany an article in Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1995. Old-timey baseball players are posed against patriotic colors and symbols of baseball, as well as printed versions of baseball slang terms like “pill,” “junkball” and “groove.”

“The Slang of Summer” from Word Improvisation by J.E. Lighter, illustration by Nancy Gibson-Nash for Atlantic Monthly, July 1995. Image courtesy of Nancy Gibson-Nash

Some of the other works in the show are by such noted Maine illustrators, past and present, as Ashley Bryan, Barbara Cooney, Kevin Hawkes, Melissa Sweet, Chris Van Dusen, Edward Hopper and Dahlov Ipcar. Former Portland Press Herald staff artist Michael Fisher also has work in the show, as does Tim Sample, best known as a Maine humorist.

After it closes at the Brick Store Museum, the exhibit will be at the Paul J. Schupf Art Center in Waterville, from April 17 through July 16. Organizers are hoping to add some pieces to the show by then, including possibly an illustration by famed Maine artist Winslow Homer.

“By exhibiting historic work alongside many forms of contemporary illustration, we hope that our audience will experience the depth of possibility in narrative art and gain both a further appreciation for the enduring, beautiful work that was created here in the past, as well as an understanding of how narrative imagery permeates our culture today,” Nancy Gibson-Nash said of the exhibit.

Alternate cover for the 2019 album “Igor,” by Tyler, the Creator, done by Lewis Rossignol. Image courtesy of Lewis Rossignol

« Previous

Next »

Related Stories