The key to unlocking the meaning behind my works.
OBDURATE: Obstinate, resistant, unyielding, hardened
As an artist living on the coast of Maine, I have come to appreciate the feeling of OBDURATE as a link to what makes Maine’s islands and peoples so determined and permanent. Many of painted images and prints echo the common theme of granite and the sea: the classic irresistible force meeting the immovable object. Maine painter Eric Hopkins has said that “islands are all about edges”–the unyielding interplay of tide and granite.
I became fascinated with the granite islands of Maine when our young family moved here over thirty years ago from the Midwest. While we had often vacationed along the low sand barrier islands of Virginia and North Carolina, from Assateague and Chincoteague to Ocracoke, the shock of granite islands, expansive spruce and balsam, thin topsoil, and near freezing ocean surf was a tonic for my creative work and geographical inquiry.
Across those many years I have traveled to all of the year-round islands in the Gulf of Maine, day-tripped to explore countless others, and even expanded my vision to other ‘obdurate islands’ across the country. From 1996 to 2015 I taught an interdisciplinary humanities course for high schoolers that explored multiple aspects of the islands in Penobscot Bay, Casco Bay, and the Gulf of Maine. I introduced hundreds of students to the richness and challenges of island life, history, and culture. And fortunately that educational work also fed my creative pursuits as an artist.
Images in this current collection range from Monhegan Island (where I have spent time each year assisting the single-room School teaching staff, students, and parents since 1994), to North Haven and Vinalhaven, the islands in the St. George River and Muscongus Bay, and east to Mount Desert and the Schoodic peninsula featuring Acadia National Park. I have images from the Casco Bay ‘Calendar Islands’ in my sight for the future.
Thom Buescher Paintings and Illustrations 