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Karma’s seasonal outpost in St James Catholic Church in Thomaston. All installation photography by Dave Clough Photography. Images courtesy of the artists and Karma.

Plenty of art-world denizens relocate to Cape Cod, the Hamptons, or upstate New York for the summer. But a growing contingent of artists, advisors, dealers, and museum leaders are now congregating a bit further north—in Maine.

The hip New York gallery Karma opened a seasonal outpost in Thomaston in 2021; a museum dedicated to the late Robert Indiana is taking shape on the nearby island of Vinalhaven; and Colby College is expanding programming on Allen Island and Benner Island, where painter Andrew Wyeth created some of his most iconic works.

One of the region’s most effective ambassadors is the artist Ann Craven, who is best known for her moody paintings of birds, moons, and other wildlife. Craven has been coming to Maine every summer since childhood and inaugurated Karma’s seasonal gallery with a two-person show with fellow Mainer Reggie Burrows Hodges. Here, Craven shares her favorite Maine haunts with CULTURED alongside the unlikely sequence of events that led her to become her own gallery’s summertime landlord.

When did you start coming to Maine?

I started coming to Maine as a child with my family, but I never stayed too long. It wasn’t until I was older that I came back to paint. I fell in love with Maine and its pointy trees, and I needed to make it a part of my life.

You have a number of connections to Karma’s seasonal outpost in Thomaston. How did you end up there? 

I was asking a local about stained glass windows in a historic tavern in town, and someone said, “You could always give them to the old Catholic church that’s for sale.” St James Catholic Church had been on and off the market for many years. I remembered that church. I had prayed for my mom in that church. My brother had just died and he had left me some money, so I wanted to buy it for my family.

I leave the tavern and it’s a rainy late afternoon in 2016, and I drive straight to the church and kneel on the ground and I say “Mom, Dad, Joe, please help me to make the right decision here.” I go back to the tavern and I call the realtor and I buy it. It took forever to finish the renovation and then, in 2021, Brendan at Karma suggested a two-person show between myself and Reggie Burrows Hodges to take place in the summer of 2021 at the church. A deadline was exactly what I needed!