FORT KENT, Maine — It’s not Paris, but for artist Monica Brooke Taney, her 10-acres in northern Maine are the next best thing.
For seven years the parcel of land along the Perley Brook in Fort Kent has been her artist’s summer retreat and her answer to having a studio in Paris.
“I came to Maine [in 2009] looking for land and bought this piece,” she said. “It’s the smartest thing I ever did.”
From about May to October she calls a little travel trailer on the property home, and over the years, she has added amenities one by one.
“I only got running water two years ago,” she said. “Before that, I had to walk a fair distance to the brook and haul water here.”
She keeps an area around the trailer clear of brush and neatly mowed. Nearby is a small, wooden cabin that serves as her art gallery and painting space. Taney also opened a gallery in Rockport in 2005 and is in the process of opening her “winter gallery” in Florida.
She studied at the Arts Student League of New York, the New York School of Interior Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology of New York and was heavily influenced by the works of the old masters.
She also was heavily influenced by American painter Reginald Marsh, who was known for painting gritty scenes of New York’s street life during the Roaring 20s and Great Depression.
“Marsh painted in what we call ‘The New York Ashcan School,’” Taney said. “My newest project is combining that style with that of the old masters.”
That project came from a visit Taney made this past spring to New York City’s wholesale flower district and drew inspiration from her observations of day-to-day life in that neighborhood.
“I lived there in 1964,” she said. “I had a real pull to go back and take a look at what is going on in 2016.”
The faces have changed, she said, but the vibe has not.
“You have these big tough men arriving at [4 a.m.] in their delivery trucks, and they are shouting dirty jokes at each other,” Taney said. “You are upstairs under your electric blanket, and suddenly you are sitting up listening to them and laughing.”
After the delivery men have come and gone, smaller trucks arrive to pick up flowers for local delivery and then, she said, it all falls silent except perhaps for the sounds of someone playing a piano or saxophone in a nearby apartment.
“It’s all so elegant and paintable,” she said.
Taney took hundreds of photos of the flower district’s daily life and transferred them to her computer, where they will serve as her “models” in her Fort Kent studio.
“I love how my knowledge of the ‘old masters’ style now pairs with technology,” she said. “Combining the two can be a really good thing for an artist.”
That combination of old and new, she said, not only allows her to record images and scenes for later painting inspirations, it opens up the a myriad of online “galleries” and websites on which she can showcase her work. The more places an artist can show their work, the better, according to Taney.
“The economy since 2007 has been rough on artists,” she said. “And artists need to be able to survive rough times.”
Taney has survived the rough times by working part time for a lawyer and by downsizing her life half of the year.
“Up here [in Fort Kent] I live off the grid and off the land,” she said. “It’s been a beautiful experience.”
She joked she’d never be a “starving artist” thanks to her little vegetable garden and presence of local berries on her land.
She also is optimistic that art will never die, and she points to work she has done that has been inspired by the St. John Valley landscape.
“There is such amazing space and wildlife up here,” Taney said. “Series I have done based on that have all sold.”
Her paintings of northern Maine’s agricultural life, wildflowers, trees and hills have become her most popular work.
“They all sell,” she said. “I find constant inspiration from nature here , and I can live an independent life here half the year, [and] that is wonderful.”
