Filled with artist Gina Parent’s heartfelt works, her Purple Door Studio will open for the first time on Saturday as part of Passport to Hodgdon Days.
Passport to Hodgdon was created to bring awareness to the town’s offerings and on Saturday, people will be given cards with the names of participating businesses to be eligible for a drawing.
Parent’s Hodgdon studio is an oasis of vibrant paintings and collages often relegated to more urban settings such as the Detroit Institute of the Arts or the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
There are disadvantages to being an alternative artist in a rural area without ready access to galleries and art events. Her sometimes whimsical brush strokes and bold palettes of purple, teal, pink and blue diverge from more traditional Maine coastal artistry. But the new 24-by-12-foot Amish building stands out on the rugged landscape along Westford Hill Road and she hopes it will attract more people to her work.
“I always wanted one,” she said on Friday. “I have a studio in my house, but always wanted one of these.”
Parent’s works share magical stories from life and nature reminiscent of famed Latino artists such as Frida Kahlo or New York artist Roberto Juarez’ murals.
Parent has sold her works for several years from a gallery on the second floor of The County Co-op & Farmstore in downtown Houlton, and also has some pieces in the Evergreen Hotel Art Gallery in Augusta.
She believes her work is progressing because she is now accepting her own style, she said.
“I used to have a hard time accepting my work because it was whimsical and not realistic and now I enjoy it,” she said. “I do see my art as a way to get through life because it relaxes me and seems like I learn things from it all the time.”
The work of painting and putting her inner story onto the canvas taught her that life is layered.
“Some of the layers are messy, really hard, tough layers, but they make you who you are,” Parent said. “I’m learning that wouldn’t have been as good if I didn’t have that messy layer in there.”
She loves the spontaneity of discovering what she will create next. Parent said it all depends on her mood and what she feels like doing on any day.
“Art is spiritual and comes from the core of my heart,” she said. “I project what I am feeling onto the canvas and music plays an important part in my art.”
Parent loves the blues, classic rock and 70s music. Before each new work, she isn’t sure what will appear. She asks Alexa for a song, and as she feels the vibe, she just starts painting and the work appears, she said.
Her Amish building for the studio was delivered last May, Parent and her husband Kevin Parent, added insulation, a floor, walls and ceiling.
One of the first things she did in her new space was paint a 24-by-20-foot mural of abstract flowers on the plywood floor. And because she had already painted large outdoor murals on Kelleran Street in Houlton, she was able to complete it quickly, she said.
The Hodgdon native has been painting ever since her mother took her to a local oil painting class as a young girl, and she created mountains with a palette knife, she said. In college she was drawn to watercolors, and after a career as a hairdresser and antique shop owner, she decided to do what she loves most and started painting full time.
She hopes her creations will someday garner attention regionally and across the country, but in the meantime, she said she’s just having fun.
“I’m enjoying life and I’m not going to stress over much,” she said.
