Suzette McAvoy

1 month ago | decormaine.com | Suzette McAvoy |Miranda Valentine

A native of Albany, New York, Bickmore studied art at Hamilton College, spending her junior year abroad at the Slade School of Fine Art in London when she “really fell in love with the city.” She returned to London to earn her MFA from the Royal College of Art in 2019.

Jan 7, 2025 | decormaine.com | Suzette McAvoy |Miranda Valentine

Studio mates and partners in life, artists Matt Demers and Allison McKeen met in 2011 at Harlow Gallery in Hallowell, Maine, where Allison worked for nearly ten years. They now share a spacious 1,500-square-foot loft in Gardiner’s downtown that serves as their studios and workspace for Allison’s rapidly expanding, eponymous product design company, noted for its colorful, whimsical prints on tea towels, cards, stickers, tote bags, and more.

Nov 5, 2024 | decormaine.com | Suzette McAvoy |Miranda Valentine

“I like the directness of painting; I like to see an image materialize,” says Gail Spaien on a visit to the studio at her home in South Portland. After three decades of teaching at Maine College of Art and Design, where she was a professor of painting and graduate studio, Spaien retired at the end of 2022.

Sep 10, 2024 | decormaine.com | Suzette McAvoy |Miranda Valentine

Artist John Moore came to Maine to teach at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summers of 1974 and 1980 and “loved Maine so much” that when he was invited back to teach again in 1984, he used that summer’s salary to buy a farm in Monroe, where he and his family spent summers for 20 years. They sold the farm in 2004, and Moore and his wife Sandra purchased a small, nearly derelict historic house on a crook of land along the east side of the Passagassawakeag River in Belfast.

Jun 25, 2024 | decormaine.com | Suzette McAvoy |Miranda Valentine

SM: Do you feel a kinship between the Maine environment and your native Scotland? DW: Absolutely, particularly regarding the spruce or the pine tree. My mother was a keen amateur painter, and my grandfather and great-grandfather were both painters, so I’ve always felt connected to this artistic milieu. I remember particularly a work by my grandfather, a pen and ink drawing with a bit of watercolor of a single pine tree; it resonates with me today. It’s almost like the tree has become my badge.