Wade Schuman Faculty Sabbatical Exhibition

In 1995 my parents bought an 18th century clapboard house on Bowie Hill, a hamlet of a few houses above a tidal marsh, in the very small outpost of Spruceville, in the tiny village of Popham in the not at all large town of Phippsburg, which is on a Peninsula southeast of Bath on the coast of Maine.

My mother came from an old New England family. Art was part of the family, as was love of nature – she had a very New England obsession with birds, trees and plants. I inherited this love, which she got from her mother (particularly a fondness of toads) and her grandfather, (particularly a fondness for birds) and from her father, (landscape – a fondness for everything).

When Covid hit I stayed in my mother’s studio in the old barn and took care of my parents through to their passing. Meanwhile, I was walking many miles at night in the snow by the ocean or in the woods past vernal pools or kayaking through thrashing pogies and the watching harbor seals.

These drawings are a result of this time. They were the animals around us, and ones my mother loved. I worked in ballpoint and acrylic because I was living in a small studio with no real kitchen or bathroom and was not up to the smell of oils and solvent. I liked the reductive simplicity of this hybrid technique. One of the freedoms of Covid was the feeling that devil-be-damned, making something was mainly to please oneself. The idea of pursuits in the larger art world seemed somehow so far away at that time. This was freeing. I also saw this project as an homage to my mother and to her New England family, and as a return to my roots as well: drawing and animals. From childhood through early adulthood, I took lessons drawing specimens at the local natural history museum. So, with this project, many aspects of my life came together.

– Wade Schuman