August Artist of the Month- Ainslie Phillips

Ainslie Phillips has been drawing and painting her entire life.  Her interest in art led her to an intensive Studio Art summer session at Andover Academy, as well as to art classes while getting her undergraduate degree at Yale University. She also created an interdisciplinary project based on the intersection of design, architecture, and Geometry while a Klingenstein Summer Fellow at Columbia University, combining her two loves of math and art.

A painter at heart, Ainslie got happily waylaid teaching middle and high school math, raising her four children, and moving with her family around the world. Having grown up in New Orleans, Ainslie has also lived in Connecticut, Washington, DC, Switzerland, Cambridge, MA, North Carolina, Florida, England, Minnesota, Hawaii, Maryland, and now here in Maine.  She has had solo shows in many of these locations, as well as on Martha’s Vineyard, in Rochester, NY, and at Thomas College in Thomasville, GA, among others.

She has seen the light reflected off of ancient rowboats in an azure harbor in Italy, the play of white on white in the snows of Minnesota, and the deep, purple shadows on the marble monuments of DC.  She sees paintings all around her—in a blue and white striped necktie strewn across the arm of a chair, in a worn wooden oar leaning jauntily against a door jamb, in the captivating light as the sun sets over the woods beyond her kitchen window here.  Through it all, she has gathered images, ideas, and inspiration for her watercolor, oil, and acrylic paintings, painting everything from still life to scenes of Venice, beaches and shells, landscapes, and everything in between.  She is currently fulfilling a lifelong dream of living in Maine and is thrilled to be getting inspiration from this beautiful part of the country.

She once had the privilege of meeting Toni Morrison and was struck when the author said that she writes the books she wants to read.  Similarly, Ainslie paints the works that she, too, longs to see in the world.  She is embracing the wonder of this state, trying to capture the light which artists have long marveled over, and discovering the influence of Maine over her own art.  This is where she longs to be, to live, and to paint, and she is thrilled to consider herself truly a “local artist.”