A cloud rolls across the blue sky on a summer day in Brooklin, Maine, in Sarah Faragher’s painting Morning Sail, July. Three sailboats cruise through Eggemoggin Reach, the island-dotted passage between Penobscot Bay and Blue Hill Bay.
Faragher painted this scene mostly on location at a small beach in Brooklin that has a good view of the Reach. “The sailboats kept tacking back and forth, so I had good opportunities to paint them that day,” she says. “I painted about two-thirds of the canvas on location, then invented the rest back home in my studio.”
The small village of Brooklin may only have a population of approximately 800 people, but it is home to one of New England’s largest concentrations of classic wooden yachts. Brooklin Boat Yard, Hylan & Brown and the WoodenBoat School all operate here, and the vessels they create have easy access to world-class sailing waters in Eggemoggin Reach, which is also the location of an annual regatta.
Faragher was born and raised on the coast of Maine, and she now lives in Mid-Coast, where she works as a professional painter. She studied art history and painting at Colby College and the University of Maine, and she bases much of her work on her home state’s coastal scenes.
“My paintings are memoirs of my experiences with
nature,” she says. “Through painting I participate in the landscape, recognize transcendent moments in nature, honor the integrity of natural forms and describe where my heart lives. I often feel as if the places I paint have commissioned me to tell their autobiographies at the same time that I tell my own.”
Faragher displays her work at the Landing Gallery in Rockland and the Littlefield Gallery in Winter Harbor. Morning Sail, July was part of her solo show at the Landing Gallery called “Portraits of Place.” —Carly Sisson
This article was originally published in the October 2022 issue.
