The Art of Francis Hamabe
by Carl Little
Published by Marshall Wilkes
Hardcover, 96 pages
10.25 x 9.25 inches
Over 100 Color Plates
ISBN: 978-0-9839670-1-9
Price: $35.00
One of Maine’s most beloved artists, Francis Hamabe was born in 1917 in Orange, New Jersey, to a Japanese father and Swedish mother. He served in World War II and attended the Rhode Island School of Design. Moving to Maine in 1947, Hamabe established himself as a sought-after painter, printmaker, ceramicist, and puppeteer. A dedicated teacher—he was the first art instructor at the Farnsworth Art Museum and later taught at the University of Maine at Machias—he also served as art director for Down East and Maine Life magazines and for the state’s first public television station in Orono.
The Art of Francis Hamabe offers a selection of his work, from dynamic modernist oil paintings and lively Sumi ink abstractions to his well-known screenprint posters. Writer Carl Little weaves an engaging narrative of the artist’s life and art illustrated with vintage photographs and examples of Hamabe’s witty and stylish graphic work. Paintings from the Colby and Bates College museums and the University of Maine Museum of Art are featured, along with numerous works from private collections, many of them reproduced for the first time.
Carl Little is the author of Edward Hopper’s New England, The Watercolors of John Singer Sargent, The Art of Dahlov Ipcar, and Eric Hopkins: Above and Beyond. His book Eric Hopkins: Above and Beyond won the first John N. Cole Prize from Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. He is a regular contributor to Art New England, Ornament, and Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors. An ex–New Yorker, Little moved to Maine in 1989; he has written and lectured on Maine art ever since. His poetry has appeared in a wide range of journals as well as in Ocean Drinker: New & Selected Poems and two anthologies edited by Wesley McNair. A resident of Somesville on Mount Desert Island, Little is director of communications and marketing at the Maine Community Foundation.