Savory Maine Dining and Provisions is pleased to exhibit the “Katahdin Fantasies” of Yarmouth watercolor artist Harry Beskind from Dec. 4 through Jan. 12. This colorful exhibit of the artist’s recent work, with a focus on Katahdin, is in Savory Maine’s main dining room. The public is invited to attend the opening reception to be held on Friday, Dec. 12 from 3 to 5 p.m., with beer, wine and finger foods.

After painting for the past 13 years, this artist has realized that his late “career” in watercolors presents just another outlet for the creativity that he often used in his 42 years of practice as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

On many occasions, Beskind found that his fantasies and spontaneous ideas were useful in supplementing and facilitating his understanding of himself and his patients, as they worked together.

Beskind recalls a patient who, although quite successful professionally, had difficulty making and maintaining personal relationships and led a very quiet personal life. Near the end of the formal therapy, he gave the patient a small gift. When he presented the gift, he realized that it fulfilled the patient's need to have a symbolic continuity with the therapist. Years later, he learned the patient still had the gift. To him, this anecdote sums up how his unconscious fantasies could support and advance his clinical work.

Late during his years as psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Beskind frequently visualized two people (himself and his patient) walking up to a blank canvas and starting to paint. This mental image represented his belief that each of them would influence what the other would produce. In spite of this recurring vision, however, he did not consciously have the idea of taking up painting after retirement in 2001.

Beskind decided in October of 2001 to attend an introductory painting class conducted by Jean Harris at Round Top Center for the Arts in Damariscotta. The first day, Harris gave everyone in the class a bunch of radishes to paint with their fingers. Beskind's finished painting bore no resemblance to radishes. Indeed, several of his classmates were rather surprised to see stick figures falling into what seemed to be an inferno of red and orange flames. Beskind realized then that he had painted the tragedy at the World Trade Center.

The only reference he had to this outcome was a comment he made to his wife, “If I ever take up painting, I am going to paint something about 9/11.”

Beskind has saved the painting, because, for him, it's a link to the importance of those elements in our minds that are not immediately available to our consciousness.

For the past 13 years, has had the pleasure of painting every summer with two groups of artists in Damariscotta and Pemaquid. Beskind has come to realize that it's not the buildings, rocks or seascape that he paints, but what he experiences when he looks at the subjects. For Beskind, painting has represented a continuation of his life's work: to try to understand aspects of our mental life and its effects on our soul.  

Savory Maine is located at 11 Water Street in Damariscotta and is open from 11 am to 8 pm, serving lunch and dinner.  It is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

For more information, call 207-563-2111.