When Margaret Canepa grew up in Connecticut without a television, she naturally looked elsewhere for entertainment.

There were always materials for various projects around the house. A sewing machine was frequently in use producing homemade costumes. She visited her local library and read constantly. She drew, sewed, wrote and played music. Canepa studied instruments and took dance lessons.

Her father had a wonderful voice and her family often sang songs around the piano. She and her siblings wrote mini-plays and performed them for each other. They put on circuses in the backyard.

After high school, she headed to New York City and her romantic notion of the starving artist in a Parisian garret was found on the Lower East Side while attending the School of Visual Arts and working in various jobs to survive.

She worked as a freelance designer for boutiques and the stage, with the vibrant colors and life of New York City in the 1960s as her home. She returned to school and earned a degree in art education from the Pratt Institute. She was hired by an alternative high school in the NYC school system as an art teacher. When that job ended, she started her own business designing hand-painted clothing and scarves using batik and direct painting methods.

In the following years, while raising two children, she earned a master’s in teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) at Hunter College. After nine years of teaching at the American Language School of New York University, Canepa's family moved from the city of her dreams to two different and equally wonderful places: Genoa, Italy and Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

At present, her time is divided equally between these two places. Canepa now paints with oil and an assortment of her work can be viewed at the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library during the month of September.

To see more of the artist's work, visit www.margaretcanepa.com.

The library is located at 4 Oak Street and is open Tuesday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.