"When I paint outside, I’m usually in a place where it’s just nature without too many structures,” Paul Brahms explained as he stood painting in a cluttered boatyard jammed with all kinds of structures. The sun was shining, the water sparkled, and Brahms had set up his easel and canvas along the Fore River in Portland, surrounded by boats and cradles and lifts and construction equipment. It’s a neighborhood he knows well. “I used to play down here when I was a kid. I thought it might be a nice place where we could be near the water without a lot of other people around.” On that count he was right. Nobody bothered the artist at work.
Having grown up in Maine and lived here most of his life, Brahms appreciates what the state offers to a painter with its endlessly shifting panorama of light, water, weather and seasons. In the summer, when the days are long and the mood is right, he might spend sixteen hours a day outside at work. That kind of focus applied over decades has produced countless paintings. Some of his most recent work is now being shown at Casco Bay Artisans, a gallery on the Portland waterfront.
There is no secret to the success. Instead, his art has progressed in fits and starts, through trial and error. “It’s evolved through a lot of mistakes,” Brahms said, “which I think comes with the territory for most of us mortals.”