Mary's Maine
Why are Mary Bourke's bright and summery paintings so popular? Because they remind us of our own family vacations.
By Sara Donnelly, Photography by Benjamin Magro
Soon after we meet, Mary Bourke takes me to her studio -- a converted barn behind her home in Lincolnville, just outside of Camden. For eight hours a day, nearly every day, Bourke sits in this white-walled retreat creating some of the most colorful and popular paintings in contemporary Maine art. Bourke spreads dozens of photographs over a table. The pictures, curled with age, show children at a lakeside, a woman reading alone on a couch, a boy holding a drawing of a Michelangelo sculpture.
"This little girl has shown up a lot in my work," she says, picking up a black and white Polaroid of a skinny girl in a bathing suit standing in the middle of a boat ramp.
