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Some people look at the Maine coast and see scenery. Others see memory, material, and message layered into every tide-worn edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Maine-based artist Mariah Reading, it all blends together on the same surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A landscape painter and environmental artist with deep Maine roots, Reading has spent years translating the state\u2019s forests, harbors, and shifting coastlines into work shaped by what the landscape holds and what it leaves behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This summer, she is opening that process to the public through a series of coastal painting workshops in Maine at the Foggy Pearl in Hancock, a historic former lobster pound turned waterfront event space overlooking Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The workshops are designed for beginners and small groups, and take place directly on site along the Downeast Maine coast. Participants learn painting fundamentals while working from real shoreline views, ending the day with a finished 11×14 canvas created during the session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Registration is now open for a limited number of summer workshops. Full details are available at mariahreadingart.com\/foggypearl<\/a> and thefoggypearl.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reading is also known in Bangor for two public murals, including a large canoe piece in front of the Bangor Public Library and another across from the Sand Dollar Spa on Broad Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her connection to Maine landscapes runs deep. Rivers, lakes, ocean, forests, and mountains all move through her work in constant seasonal change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While studying at Bowdoin College, she began confronting the amount of waste generated through her studio practice. That shift led her to incorporate discarded materials from her own work, and later to collect debris from public lands across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her current practice focuses on marine debris collected along the Maine coast, used to explore pollution, sea level rise, and the warming of the Gulf of Maine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2019, Reading was an Artist-in-Residence at Acadia National Park, working across Isle au Haut, Schoodic, and the Brown Mountain Gate House. Her time there combined plein air painting with studio work developed from field studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of her largest pieces began on a cracked aquaculture box found on the rocky shore beneath Otter Cliff. That work was later exhibited in the Center for Maine Contemporary Art Biennial in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She also donated a piece titled \u201cLend a Hand,\u201d created from a found glove on a trail, now on display at the Hulls Cove Visitor Center in Bar Harbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Foggy Pearl workshops are built around direct experience with place. Each session begins outside, focused on composition and color before participants choose their own view of the coastline to paint. Instruction moves through background, middle ground, and foreground development, supported by acrylic technique guidance and one-on-one feedback in a small group setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The setting plays a central role in the experience. Light shifts across the water throughout the day, tides change the edge of the shore, and each participant works from the same landscape but arrives at something different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reading said her goal is not to create copies of her own work, but to give people tools to develop their own way of seeing the Maine coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She hopes participants leave happily with a finished painting, a new set of skills, and a different relationship to the landscape around them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some people look at the Maine coast and see scenery. 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