LITTLETON, Maine — An Aroostook County artist has put in his woodshedding years, those so-called 10,000 hours of practice to discover the way colors blend, fight and inform.
For Frank Sullivan, colors are much like characters in a story.
It’s only now, looking back over nearly two decades of professional painting, that the Littleton abstract artist knows his works are rooted in a chordal harmony. Hitting different musical keys, some are concertos, and some are minuets, he said.
“That one is like C Major and that’s B Minor,” he said on a recent afternoon, pointing to different pieces hanging in his Rainbarrow Studio, located in a historic County potato barn on Route 1.
It’s been a good year for Sullivan, who not only sold out of the first printing of his book, Frank Sullivan: Images and Words, in the fall, but was also awarded an Aroostook Creative Network Micro-Grant. Furthermore, 25 of his best works are currently hanging in the State House gallery at the request of the Maine Commission for the Arts as part of the Art in the Capitol Program.
Additionally, hundreds of his works hang in private collections throughout the United States and elsewhere, he said.
While the process is nearly always hard work, he makes art because he has to.
“Its satisfying when I finish. It’s what gives my life meaning,” Sullivan said. “There is a fleeting sense of satisfaction that would never have happened if I had not gone through the struggle. Then it starts again the next day, facing the blank canvas.”
Sullivan was always interested in art, drawing, painting and going to galleries and art museums. But because he never thought he could do it as a career, other pursuits filled his days. For many years he played music with the instrumental rock band, Angel of Monz, and worked as a graphic designer and illustrator in Massachusetts.
Still, he felt in his gut there was more to life. As part of what would become a dramatic life change, he evaluated where he was going by asking two questions.
“If I had a million dollars, what would I do?”
“If I knew I was going to die soon what would I do?”
The answer was clear. Quit his job, get an old farm house in Maine and paint full time.
Nineteen years ago, that vision became reality as Sullivan, his wife Meryl and their two toddler children, Rothery, now 24, and Damien, now 20, moved into the circa-1900 white farm house with the green metal roof on 10 acres.
In the beginning, he stayed home with the children while Meryl worked outside the home. At the end of each day, once everyone was settled, Sullivan painted at night. Sometimes long into the darkness, he explored the rhythm of northern Maine landscapes among the County’s regular coyote howls.
In 2006 he opened Rainbarrow Studio where he has been painting professionally nearly every day since.
Sullivan converted the once working potato barn into his studio and gallery. Rows of completed work now line the gallery walls, and sketches, color samplings and smaller versions of larger works fill random spaces along easels and walls.
Additionally, Sullivan teaches fine art at the University of Maine in Presque Isle and he directs UMPI’s Reed Gallery.
His book, now in its second printing, includes 32 images of his more recent oil-on-canvas creations along with musings on art, his creative journey and his impassioned belief in artistic authenticity.
Nearly all his works start with a basic structure that is in a lot of ways like jazz chord progressions, forming the foundation of the piece, and then he builds from there with colors, he said.
“I mix the colors for my painting before I begin, and I try to have a different set of colors for every painting so I don’t repeat myself. I think of them as characters in a story,” Sullivan said. “I let the painting unfold, and I don’t really know what it is going to look like.”
Sometimes there’s a main character, sometimes there is an antagonist and a protagonist, two colors diametrically opposed and fighting each other, sometimes it’s a love story, he said.
Over the years his works have evolved from more hard-edged architectural images to be looser and more abstract.
“As soon as I get to the point where I think I am in control, I change it. I need to feel like I’m in the fog and I’m on shaky ground and I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “I need that to be able to work.”
When he used to paint barns or specific topography, people would say, “I worked in that barn as a kid,” or “I know where that is.”
That’s not what he wanted from his work, he said.
“What I like is when people look at a painting and say ‘I recognize that place’ — that’s a visual manifestation of an emotional place,” he said, referring to his more abstract works.
The microgrant helped Sullivan pay for another printing of his book. Copies are $30 and can be purchased online or locally at Morningstar Art and Framing in Presque Isle, the Houlton Regional Hospital Gift Shop and the County Co-Op Store in Houlton.
His current State House exhibition, Familiar Places, will be on display in Augusta through April.
