PEGGY CLARK LUMPKINS, Painter
The Belfast Area Chamber of Commerce and the Arts in the Park Jurying Committee is happy to announce that they have selected Peggy Clark Lumpkins as the 2025 Artist of the Year.
Peggy has been a painter for 60 years now. In her early years she went to a local art school after grammar school, on Wednesdays, and then grew up in NYC, attending the High School of Art and Design. When that magical 4 years were up, she moved on to The San Francisco Academy of Art for her first year of college, then returned east for her second year at Pratt Institute. At this point though, she knew what she wanted to paint. Peggy needed to paint what she loved and not what her teachers desired, so she took a leave of absence and never looked back.
The clearest way for Peggy to say how she feels about what she sees is to paint it. There are no words to say everything as clearly as she can with her brush and colors.
“The first part is joie de vivre, it’s loving the world. One must love what one paints. First you go out into the world wide open, and when you fall in love with a flower, a cloud, or a shape, or a line in the sand (or all of the above!), then you begin to paint. Even before you have a canvas the paint has begun to flow. It flows first as a sort of dance inside my being,” says Peggy. “It swirls around in there and becomes a part of me, at home with all the other paintings that make up myself. The whole world is a painting to me.”
“When words fail, as they so often do, Paint! Painting is a love letter to being alive. It’s a thank you note to the living world, to time, to the moment, the flowers, the surf, the wind, the moisture in the air…. Some people think I make up the clouds, but instead, the clouds make up me,” she says.
“We moved to Brownville, Maine in 1987 to build our house and gardens. We raised and home schooled our two sons inside the embrace of art. They often accompanied me on plein air trips, all of us setting up our easels somewhere on the coast of Maine. Even though they are out on their own now, I still feel their warmth and laughter when I go out painting.”
After a cancer diagnosis in 2021 in the middle of her art show season, Peggy had to miss several shows due to two operations. Due to its effect on her immune system and the ongoing pandemic, she would miss several more while she underwent chemotherapy. By spring of 2022, Peggy had her last chemotherapy treatment, and with the help and support of practitioners and family and friends, she was ready to try to get back to doing what she loves most.
“Even though I have been painting for 60 years, I still feel like I am just getting started, rubbing my hands together in excitement for the next piece.”
For more about Peggy and to see her works, please visit www.peggyclarklumpkins.com.
