Golden Sails: Encaustic Visions of the Maine Coast

In Golden Sails: Light and Memory on the Maine Coast, contemporary Maine artist Willa Vennema presents a new body of encaustic paintings inspired by the experience of seeing a fleet of historic wooden sailboats glide through the waters of Jericho Bay. Created with beeswax, damar resin, pigment, and layered textures, these luminous encaustic paintings capture fleeting moments of coastal Maine—early morning fog lifting over the water, glowing sails catching warm light, and a horizon filled with quiet movement. Works such as Sunrise Sail evoke the stillness of dawn when sailors rise alongside lobstermen, while paintings featuring golden sails transform the maritime scene into a metaphor for peace, hope, and prosperity. The encaustic process allows light to pass through translucent layers of wax, giving each painting a soft glow that shifts subtly depending on the viewer’s perspective and the surrounding light.

Rooted in Vennema’s long-running Boat Series, the paintings in this exhibition balance abstraction with recognizable maritime imagery, distilling the essence of Maine’s sailing culture and island landscape. Inspired by time spent on the water near Swan’s Island, the compositions reflect both observation and imagination—memories of a bay filled with graceful boats, shimmering clouds, and the calm joy of a summer day at sea. Through layered surfaces, embedded materials, and a restrained palette, Vennema creates contemporary encaustic paintings that celebrate the beauty of coastal Maine while exploring themes of time, movement, and place. The result is a collection of modern maritime landscapes that resonate with collectors of contemporary Maine art, coastal landscape painting, and encaustic fine art.