VEAZIE, Maine — Jim Power is a private man. He doesn’t like to talk about his service in World War II. He doesn’t pose for photographs. He begins talking about his art tentatively, warming to a stranger slowly but steadily.
Power is 90 and doesn’t hear as well as he once did. He walks with a cane and struggles to tell the tales his wife, Pam Colson Power, uses to prompt his memories.
But his art and his love for his wife, whom he married when he was 58 years old and she just 29? He’ll readily talk about both.
“I’m not going to be on the earth forever, and a lot of the things I’m creating are for her,” Power says, softly. “That’s where my inspiration is.”
That inspiration is a powerful machine.
He’s still a prolific painter. Each day, when his wife returns after work, she says there’s evidence he has been working.
Sometimes he has been painting. Other times he has been studying, still honing his craft.
“When I come home, he’s usually got piles and piles of [art] books all over the place,” Colson Power says.
The walls of their Veazie home are covered with paintings. Many are Jim’s. Others are by artists the couple admire.
Power sells his paintings through the Northport Landing Gallery in Northport, and his wife says a pair of his most recent paintings sold to a buyer from England.
Still, Power doesn’t openly promote himself or his work.
“I’m not very interesting,” he says toward the end of an interview, during which he has proven the opposite to be true. “I just can’t help it.”
Nearby, his wife chuckles. She, too, knows better.
An early start
Power began his artistic career the way a lot of children do: as a method to cope with long hours at school.
“I spent more time drawing and painting than ABCs,” he says, describing his early years. “I had no interest in [school].”
After serving in World War II — he was a pilot in the Flying Tigers but doesn’t want to talk about that — he sought out art instruction and found it in New York City. There, he learned at the hand of some of the city’s finest illustrators and continued to hone his craft.
At first, many of his works focused on the things he’d known best in the war: airplanes.
Bangor residents probably have seen evidence of his work, though they may not have known the name of the artist. Power’s airplane-related art decorated the walls of Pilot’s Grill in Bangor for many years.
Even his wife didn’t know that at first.
“The first time he asked me out was to go to lunch at the Pilot’s Grill, and I sat in a room full of his art,” Colson Power says.
Always private, Jim never told his future wife she was sitting with the artist who created the paintings she admired.
He did, however, confess he was a bit of an art nut.
“He was doing Charles Schulz cartoons on the back of the placemat,” she says. “He was drawing Charlie Browns and Snoopys.”
Before long, Power showed his future wife more of his work and created a painting of the building she was living in: the Philo Strickland House. That piece still hangs in the couple’s home.
Not long after that, the couple bought a cat, Philo, that also proved to be quite an artist.
“Philo walked across some of those paintings, watercolors [when they were still wet],” Colson Power says.
Jim wasn’t bothered by the invasion.
“Jim’s comment was, ‘Oh. I think it looks better,’” Colson Power says.
A footnote to the episode: Philo is no longer alive, but the cat’s spirit is carried on in a couple of ways. There’s a painting of the creative cat on another wall, and one of their current cats — a Balinese named Tutu — also can’t keep his paws off Jim’s paintings
Nudes? Sure
While much of Power’s current work is Maine related — seascapes, seaside towns, interesting buildings and town centers he sees all are well-represented in his burgeoning collection — some pieces are a bit more risque.
“That’s a woman’s ass over there,” Power says, truly warming up to the interview process and pointing at a small painting in the living room. Then he grins. “It’s Pam.”
His wife shakes her head and admits the derriere in question is, indeed, hers.
“I knew you were going to say that,” she says. “That’s a bad story.”
As the story goes, Colson Power didn’t know that a painting of her backside was available on the open market until her brother spoke to her one day a few years ago.
He asked, have you ever posed for nudes, and did Jim paint them?
Her brother explained he was quite sure he recognized Power’s style — and his sister’s backside — in a painting that was selling in a local antique mall.
Her brother told her she always has stood the same jaunty way, and Colson Power admits that’s true.
Apparently Power had given the painting to a local businessman who admired it. That businessman, in turn, gave it to another businessman. And after that man’s death, it ended up on the market.
“Sure enough, [it was there],” Colson Power says with a laugh. “So I’m dickering for a lower price — and I bought it.”
Now it hangs on a wall in the couple’s living room, where Colson Power said it will remain.
“It’s not leaving the house again,” she says.
There’s never a dull moment in an artist’s house, she says.
“We’ve had some fun art moments over the years,” she says, laughing again.
Love notes
Colson Power says her husband is not only prolific, he’s fast. She says she once watched as Jim created a huge watercolor in fewer than 10 minutes and captured the scene perfectly.
Power said he simply has been painting for so long the process has become comfortable for him.
“I’m always thinking about composition, and I study,” he explains. “I have fun doing it, too. I don’t care about money. You’ve got to have so much money to get by, but I’m not out there selling bottles [to survive].”
And while he takes his art seriously, he’s willing to accept inspiration from others as well — especially if the source of ideas is his wife.
“I always told him I wanted a sketch of the cows down on the Davis Farm [across the road],” Colson Power says.
Power did a sketch, and his wife proudly displayed it above the kitchen sink — and then it vanished.
“It slipped down through [a crack],” she says. “I said, ‘Well, whoever buys this place when we’re gone will redo the kitchen and find the little note with the cows on it and say, ‘What kind of people lived here?’”
The answer to that question is clear for Power. Exactly the kind of people they were.
“I told you I loved you,” Power reminds his wife. “It was a love note, with two cows.”
Then he pauses.
“I’ll do it again,” he says, softly.
His wife smiles.
