Meet Independent Artist & Small Business Owner David McPhee
After spending seven years in Afghanistan, David started painting as a means of therapy and gifting his art in 2007.
In 2013, people began asking him for prints of his original artwork. At that time, he also began selling his art one specific art show per year. In 2020, he listed his seascapes for sale on Etsy.
The Inspiration Behind Little River Artworks
David’s beautiful scenic watercolor and oil paintings are heavily inspired by his childhood and lobstering in Maine. He aspires to capture the personality and character of the working waterfront of New England, which is slowly going away. Due to gentrification and increasing land values/ property tax increases in these areas, many of today’s lobstermen and women often cannot live where they work. The cost of living is too high for many in the maritime industries to live on the water. That part of our identity feels to David like it is - in a sense, drifting away. David aspires to capture the authenticity of these people and places, and capture an important aspect of our history. Why? The reason is simple: he sees beauty in the sea, and those hard working people who make their living on it.
An Authentic Approach to Art
David strives to capture the experience of the scenes in his artwork. By learning through painting outdoors, he learned to develop his palette using pigments that mix colors that are true to the scene. Rather than heavily abstracting his style. he focuses on capturing the authentic beauty of the people and places reflected in his paintings.
From watercolor paintings of boats on the water to oil prints of the night sky, David has an authentic style that captures a moment in time. He wants people to see the beauty in the truth of a landscape or seascape. He wants people to experience cool salt air on their skin or the wind in their hair. Just like he did.
Going forward, David is working on developing his skills in portraiture so he can include more faces of people who live along the Maine waterfront. He also hopes to capture the authenticity of other places he paints.