I’m finishing up the slideshow lecture, Artists of the Kennebunks, which I first started in 2004 in partnership with Kennebunkport artist, Frank W. Handlen. As we usually did when we worked together, I focused on researching historical facts about the artists’ lives while Frank focused on their aesthetic painting styles. I will quote Frank liberally because, even though he too has now passed, for me, his voice has not.

Goose Rocks Beach artist, Eliot O’Hara, was born in 1890 in Waltham, MA. He became manager of the family business, O’Hara Waltham Dial Co., in 1912. Some of his associates at the factory remembered when he bought his first watercolor box in 1924. The first painting O’Hara ever sold depicted the view of an unsightly garbage dump outside his window at the factory. He finally sold his family business after winning two Guggenheim Fellowships in 1928 and 1929. The awards took him to paint in Europe, Russia, and Africa. He opened his famous art school at Goose Rocks Beach in 1931.

Frank Handlen, who worked with him at the Mission Gallery in 1968, wrote of O’Hara’s work, “He brought to the rendering of watercolor an innovative simplification of form. The minutia of waves or tree leaves were simply implied. His bold brush strokes and his artistic disdain, if you will, of any fussy detail were very effective. Eliot often said, “It is the last stroke that kills a picture.” I suppose at times that is true, but I can attest that sometimes it’s the first stroke.”

During World War II, O’Hara’s classes at GRB were attended mostly by women. During the 1946 season, he proudly announced in the Beachcomber that he finally had lots of men in his class, “including fifteen Veterans!” He even gave the Veterans of WWII a special exhibit at the beach that year.

O’Hara Watercolor School at Goose Rocks Beach, burned to the ground during the great fire of 1947. It never reopened.

Join me August 14th at 7 pm at the Town House School to learn about some of our other favorite Artists of the Kennebunks and to see examples of their work.