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By Diane Hudson<\/p>\n
When asked to write a piece about my friend William Irvine by the editor who was smitten on seeing Bill\u2019s painting Lovers by the Sea<\/i> featured in a solo exhibit at the Courthouse Gallery in Ellsworth,
\nI decided to do the interview in person. As he\u2019s recently turned 95, I seize the opportunity to have this visit (I mean, how much longer will he be around?).<\/p>\n
Bill is quick to disarm me. \u201cYou know, people are living longer now than they ever have. Studies have shown that the person who will live to be 150 has already been born.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a rather wide grin, he says, \u201cI was born too early.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe I\u2019m Amazed<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cBut seriously, I don\u2019t feel 95. I\u2019m still the little boy in Scotland who tried out some oils and saw he could paint. I tell you, I got here so fast. People don\u2019t realize the speed that life goes by. I\u2019m actually amazed I\u2019m this old.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m lucky enough that I\u2019m still physically able to come into the studio and work, and I find my passion for painting hasn\u2019t changed since I was young. I still have the urge to work\u2014it\u2019s a lifetime obsession.<\/p>\n Chasing the Elusive<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m trying to produce the work that will finally please me enough, but you never do. Seeking that final painting keeps me in my studio all year. While I can, I\u2019ll continue working till the last day. My wife will find me with a brush in my hand.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember when Bill and I first met. It\u2019s as if we\u2019ve always been friends. Over many years, he welcomed my partner Eddie Fitzpatrick and me to his rustic \u201cwee hoose\u201d in Blue Hill, where we\u2019d all playfully forage for mushrooms or go to his cottage on Blue Hill Bay in Brooklin, again filling our tummies and souls, here with treasures found by the sea: mussels and clams.<\/p>\n \u201cEddie would forage enough mussels to take back to use at his restaurant [the Pepperclub in Portland],\u201d Bill says as we sit on his deck overlooking the bay. We\u2019re at the \u201ccottage,\u201d now his year-round home shared with his wife, Marge. I remember Bill digging clams everywhere here and ask if he\u2019s still foraging.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are none to be found now\u2014no mussels or clams at all. Still lots of lobsters out here, though! My son comes and finds chanterelles and ink caps by our drive. I find pink bottoms at the golf course, if I can get there before the golfers use them to practice their swings! Also, a friend delivers large [quahog] shells every week that I use for my palettes.<\/p>\n He needs a big supply of these shells, as he paints a lot.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cAbout three years ago, I sold 120 paintings in one year. I thought then, wow, I must be doing a lot of work! I figure [I\u2019m averaging] probably a hundred or so paintings a year.<\/p>\n \u201cQuite a few galleries are asking for work\u2014I can\u2019t keep up with it. And, I\u2019m in the luxurious position of not having to sell.\u201d<\/p>\n At the beginning of showing at Courthouse 15 years ago, Bill and Marge traveled to the South of France. He remembers \u201csitting at this cafe and thinking how wonderful it is to be able to do all this because of my paintings.\u201d<\/p>\n A few weeks ago, Thomaston Place Auction Galleries set a new record for him when his oil on canvas Morning Harbour<\/i> sold for $14,400\u2014$12,400 over the estimate. \u201cThat\u2019s an oldie. I think I painted it in 1973.\u201d<\/p>\n Reflecting a little on how he started his life\u2019s pursuit as an artist (we are now in his studio, just behind the cottage), he takes us closer.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere I grew up in Troon [on the west coast of Scotland, 35 miles southwest of Glasgow] in the 1930s and 1940s, I never saw any original art, only reproductions in newspapers and magazines. They were full of surrealist art, and I fell in love with that. One day, Johnny Walker, the whisky entrepreneur, who lived in Troon too, invited me to see his art collection at his house, \u201c<\/i>Pierceland.\u201d<\/i> It was mostly British art, but it was original.\u201d<\/p>\n The real awaken-ing, however, was when he went to Glasgow to see an exhibit of Matisse and Picasso. \u201cIt punched me in the gut! I felt such a fire for painting, and it has never died. A painting by Picasso, Woman in a Rocking Chair<\/i>\u2014I saw it almost 70 years ago\u2014I can still see right in front of me, it excited me so much.\u201d<\/p>\n After doing his two years of National Service and graduating from Glasgow School of Art, he went to London, spending 10 years in the late 1950s and 1960s in Soho, the locus for bohemians such as Francis Bacon and other painters, writers, and poets. \u201cNone of us sold much, except Bacon. We\u2019d get together and drink a lot. I always wondered why we never got drunk.\u201d<\/p>\n While teaching in a school there, he met an American girl, Stephanie. \u201cShe was in the staff room, with her feet up,\u201d he recalls, eyes lighting up. \u201cWe clicked, married, and were living in a tiny bedsitter [in 1967] when we saw an ad for a farmhouse in Skowhegan with 400 acres for $4,000.\u201d<\/p>\n Sea Change<\/strong><\/p>\n They packed up and moved to Maine. Hating the house at first sight, they got in the car and looked everywhere else, finally renting an A-frame in Milbridge. \u201cOur only neighbor, a lobsterman, took us out every morning. There was blue sky and the water. I said, \u2018I\u2019m never going to leave here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually buying the house in Blue Hill, Bill set up his studio in the barn behind the house where he painted for nearly half a century.<\/p>\n When Stephanie died in 1985, Bill, heartbroken, tried returning to Scotland. \u201cI realized my life [was still in Maine], so I came back.\u201d<\/p>\n Ten years later he married Margery Wilson, who\u2019d been a friend of Stephanie\u2019s. The cottage in Brooklin, where I\u2019m visiting, The best way to talk about the painting that brought me here, Lovers by the Sea, <\/i>is in Bill\u2019s own words:<\/p>\n \u201cI did not want to paint a dramatic expression of love, a passionate embrace, but more of a whisper, the quieter side, trust, togetherness, love that creates its own sanctuary in the midst of life.<\/p>\n \u201cThe sea to me is life. I have lived 95 years by the ocean, and I have always felt its eternal spirit that we as humans briefly share.<\/p>\n \u201cThat contrast between the universality of the sea and the intimacy of the lovers is what I feel gives the painting its emotional impact.<\/p>\n \u201cAlso, in contrast is the movement of the gulls to the stillness of the figures.<\/p>\n \u201cI chose evening as a setting, that time when warm colors lie down like bedsheets, shadows embrace, and the intimacy of lovers becomes their universe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Diane Hudson A lad o\u2019 pairts discovers himself in Maine. When asked to write a piece about my friend William Irvine by the editor who was smitten on seeing Bill\u2019s painting Lovers by the Sea featured in a solo exhibit at the Courthouse Gallery in Ellsworth, I decided to do the interview in person. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1511],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-frontpage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26647,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26645\/revisions\/26647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nis their place now.<\/p>\n