Vacationland Featuring the Work of Paul Brahms and Rebecca Hayes

Vacationland

Featuring the works of Paul Brahms and Rebecca Hayes

Join Casco Bay Artisans as we celebrate the iconography and essence of what makes Maine ‘Vacationland’.

Paul Brahms is a master painter with brush and pallet knife. With simple strokes, he captures details and emotion. His sense of color is that of someone who has spent a lifetime looking and letting the colors reveal themselves with all of their depth and nuance. ⁠In his own words “My artwork is a way of expressing what I notice around me, and what rises up within me. It’s a way to share my experience, and bring joy and reassurance and surprise and other forms of life-sustaining concepts to others. I aspire to be like the bee who tells his co-workers where the flowers are or a filmmaker who illuminates the tension in a scene. I want my work to move, to have atmosphere, and to embody a searching, questioning state of being, but this requires meditation as much as agitation, and I straddle this polarity often ,leaving a visual record of this struggle. Ultimately, my painting is a meditation, a yearning for intimate awareness.”⁠

Rebecca Hayes is an emerging artist who’s work is already highly sought after. Her attention to detail and ability to capture reflections show the prowess of a master painter in the making. In her own words: “Ranging from scenes that reference the coast of Maine to the interiors of my childhood house, the subject matter of my work always seems to come back to my home in the Portland area of Maine. While I strive to create images with an authentically local perspective on this vacation destination, I don’t consider the actual scene depicted to be paramount when explaining the purpose of my work. Each subject I paint serves as a visual medium to explore various aspects of my personal painting style, which combines techniques from traditional realism with expressive, painterly sensibilities. This mixture of styles has been triggered by an overarching fascination with abstract nature of light and the way it inhabits a space. Through the use of photography as a reference, which I originally utilized to give myself the time to meticulously render detail, I have become intrigued by the patterns that emerge from light when it is forced to sit still, like in shadows and reflections. I also closely study the way light can dramatically affect the entire palette of an image, such as morning versus evening light, and natural versus man made. The environment of my life in Maine, both outside and in, provides countless scenes for me to examine the way light influences pattern and color, while maintaining a dedication to representational art.”