{"id":64293,"date":"2022-11-01T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/?p=64293"},"modified":"2022-11-01T09:01:38","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T13:01:38","slug":"watercolor-painter-abe-goodale-traces-his-roots-on-700-acre-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/watercolor-painter-abe-goodale-traces-his-roots-on-700-acre-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Watercolor Painter Abe Goodale Traces His Roots on 700 Acre Island"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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While Gibson\u2019s illustrations were inky and sharp, Goodale\u2019s style is more watery and atmospheric. Where Gibson drew the glamorous denizens of New York City, Goodale paints the men and women who fish the Atlantic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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There are four old chairs in the artist\u2019s studio, lined up against one unpainted wall. They are in various stages of aging; one is too old to sit in, one is sturdy and hale, one is questionable, and one looks almost new. When I take a seat, I don\u2019t realize what I\u2019m placing my bottom on. Later I learn that I\u2019ve chosen my perch well. \u201cThat\u2019s my Pop Pop\u2019s chair,\u201d says artist Abe Goodale. \u201cThis one, I like to think, was Charles Dana Gibson\u2019s.\u201d I tell him it\u2019s a good thing I didn\u2019t try to use that one. \u201cYes,\u201d he responds, \u201cI never use it. It\u2019s too precious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goodale is a self-taught painter with a vivid imagination who speaks with intensity and enthusiasm, even about the most mundane of family artifacts, like these four chairs. He is descended from a line of painters and illustrators, the most famous of which was Charles Dana Gibson, the inventor of the \u201cGibson Girl,\u201d a nineteenth-century phenomenon that defined Gilded Age femininity: the blowsy haired, delicate featured girl was often depicted riding bicycles, playing tennis, and indulging in other athletic leisure activities. One of the most prolific and talented illustrators working at the turn of the century, Gibson had an influence on fashion magazines that can still be seen today. Not only did he document the world of the well-heeled, but he also shaped it with his incisive, witty captions and commentary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the studio, surrounded by history. On the wall behind Goodale, a glimpse of his grandfather\u2019s work in the form
of a cubist sketch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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One of the playhouses that Gibson built for his grandchildren; Goodale says, \u201cThey\u2019re stunning in terms of composition, the angles, the background; he wasn\u2019t an architect, he was an artist, and you can see that element coming through.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Goodale\u2019s studio, located on 700 Acre Island off the coast of Lincolnville, isn\u2019t really his. It belongs to \u201cthe family,\u201d a rather nebulous group of descendants bound by their shared history of summering on this picturesque island. The other members of their family have allowed Goodale to use the studio, granted him access to their various plots of land, given him permission to walk across their lawns, sketch on their cliffs, paint in their backyards. Throughout my visit to the island, Goodale gently directs our small group (Goodale, me, photographer Nicole Wolf, and Goodale\u2019s two friendly dogs) toward common trails and away from porches. \u201cFamily politics,\u201d he says at one point, in explanation. He may belong to this place, but it doesn\u2019t belong to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His presence in this historic place is, he says, \u201can immense privilege,\u201d one that he hopes to honor and repay through his art. Currently Goodale is working on a series of watercolor paintings that are directly inspired by a group of oils by Gibson. \u201cThis collection of paintings has never really left the island,\u201d says Goodale of the original canvases. \u201cThey were shown once, in New York, in the 1930s and 1940s. But it is work that has never been seen, by an artist who is part of American history.\u201d That alone is a big deal. It\u2019s a major reason why the Maine Arts Commission awarded Goodale a grant in 2019 to develop this project. Goodale is trying to share and promote a piece of local history. He\u2019s trying to tell a story that not enough people have had the chance to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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While he\u2019s interested in researching and displaying Gibson\u2019s oils, Goodale works primarily in watercolor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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But there are other reasons to be interested in this work in progress. Firstly, he isn\u2019t riding anyone\u2019s coattails. Goodale is a talented painter whose pale watercolors beautifully capture the foggy, vague quality of days at sea. (He makes much of his money through commissioned paintings of boats and harbors, which he depicts with a deft hand and little color.) \u201cGoodale\u2019s portraits of fishermen are true to life, rough and ready men portrayed with cigarettes dangling from their lips or reaching for a line,\u201d wrote art critic Carl Little in a recent issue of Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors<\/em>. \u201cThere is an authenticity in these portraits that recalls some of Andrew Wyeth\u2019s studies of Maine coast denizens.\u201d Goodale was raised on a sheep farm in Montville, so he\u2019s no stranger to physical labor, and thanks to his father\u2019s connection to the island and the sea, he knows the working waterfront and its inhabitants intimately. He is able to capture Maine in a way that many outsiders couldn\u2019t. He\u2019s close to his subject, and it shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Goodale\u2019s ambitions are larger than simply sharing Gibson\u2019s oils or showing his own watercolors. This is precisely what he plans to do, someday, when the entire project is finished. But Goodale doesn\u2019t just want to add to the historic body of work. He wants to expand upon it, to respond to it, to give it new breath, depth, and texture. He wants to speak across time to his distant, famous ancestor, and in the process, he wants to spark something new. \u201cThe most important thing I want to convey with my work, with all my work, is that human-to-human connection,\u201d he says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if something is technically great. It matters if it speaks to someone.\u201d He wants to take people to 700 Acre Island through his art, and to introduce them to the figures that loomed so large in his childhood\u2014his great-great-grandfather Charles Dana Gibson, his uncle Peter Perkins Goodale, and his grandfather Robert Perkins Goodale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pieces from Goodale\u2019s body of work; he specializes in portraits, but Goodale has also been known to paint boats, harbors, seascapes, and boatbuilders.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Inside the island chapel, which Gibson designed and built to be as picturesque as possible. The walls of the small structure are lined with plaques that commemorate various family members and their achievements.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s rather lofty stuff, but this is what often happens when you talk to an artist in the middle of a project. You get a vague cloud of an idea, wistful workings, a string of concepts punctuated sharply with examples, the rare specific that helps you see the full picture, like the beak of a nose drawn sharply across an otherwise blandly pretty face. \u201cI\u2019ve asked some of the people who sat for Gibson\u2019s oils to sit for me,\u201d Goodale reveals. Gibson\u2019s grandchildren were a frequent source of inspiration for the painter, and some of them are still alive, still willing to be painted. \u201cI want to go to the same places where he did his landscapes, and create them in my style, showing how the island has changed,\u201d he says. He has also been working on painting the playhouses and chapel, a group of three charming, miniature stone cottages that Gibson built for his grandchildren on a grassy field overlooking the ocean. While it is unknown whether Gibson ever rendered these structures on canvas or in oil, it doesn\u2019t matter. Goodale isn\u2019t trying to recreate every one of the paintings his ancestor did on the island. \u201cIn some ways, this is an opportunity for me to fill in the gaps of his story,\u201d he says. \u201cI can represent these things he created, which were such an important part of my childhood, and I can share that with people.\u201d Originally, Goodale had envisioned visiting the locations where Gibson painted and doing his own work in the same space, hanging those two bodies of work, separated by a century, in one show. But now, he says, \u201cI think I want to include the other artists in my family. I want to incorporate text, maybe, to add depth and reference.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Goodale doesn\u2019t want to rush this new project: \u201cI don\u2019t want to put it into the world prematurely; I have the time to work, and it\u2019s not perfectly polished right now, but it feels full and rich.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Abe Goodale holds an old canvas in his borrowed studio on 700 Acre Island. A century ago, this piece of land was owned and treasured by Goodale\u2019s most famous ancestor: Gilded Age artist Charles Dana Gibson. Since then, it has served as inspiration for many of Gibson\u2019s descendants.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Goodale is still figuring out the details of the show. He\u2019s also grappling with the bigger questions that many of us stumble upon as we age: Where do I fit into the world? What role does my family history play in shaping my life? Where do I fit into my community and how can I be a good citizen? What can I give to the world that will last? For Goodale, the answers are still hazy, which means I trust him to deliver something thoughtful and real. Big questions get shaggy, rangy answers. Big stories aren\u2019t told without digressions. \u201cRight now, a lot of the work I\u2019m doing is just being in quiet. I\u2019m trying to be still and introspective, sitting somewhere and looking,\u201d he explains. He\u2019s not painting constantly or researching. He\u2019s spending a good deal of his time on 700 Acre Island simply being. It\u2019s getting him closer, he believes, to his goal. \u201cIn our culture, a lot of us don\u2019t have a sense of roots. We\u2019re floating,\u201d he rightly observes. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be fair to say that I sit in this studio and feel perfectly at home, but I\u2019m beginning to feel like there\u2019s a lineage. I\u2019m beginning to see it come together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t\t

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