NEW GLOUCESTER – Sarah Fillmore of New Gloucester spent Saturday sitting in a chair by her easel, painting her neighborhood at the corner of the Cobb’s Bridge Road and Route 231.

Sarah was joined by roughly 40 artists from Maine and Canada who scattered throughout the area to spend a six-hour day painting works of art to launch a fund-raiser Saturday night to benefit Fiddlehead Center of the Arts at Pineland.

A reception from 5 to 7 p.m. gave bidders a firsthand view of the finished works before the Second Annual Autumn Celebration: Fresh Paint Event and Auction.

The auction raised $8,000, with 43 works fetching from $200-$800 each, according to Mary Jo Marquis, artistic director for the Fiddlehood Center. Some of the painters donated 100 percent of the sale money; others contributed 50 percent of their proceeds.

Earlier in the day, Jan and Carlton Wilcox of Intervale Farm on Route 231 welcomed eight artists who settled into the landscape of the working farm to capture a paint-perfect day of fall. Pumpkins and squash and flowers surrounded the century-old brick farmhouse, its adjoining buildings and giant red barn.

Jan Wilcox says this is not the first time artists have stopped at the farm to paint.

“Every year, an artist comes and paints and sketches around the house. It’s nice to see people coming to paint the rural setting. Once in a while, we get a gift, a painting, it’s a treat, but nothing we ask for,” says Jan Wilcox.

“We thought of painting the roof of the shed, but the artists tell us not to touch it. That’s the least I can do. I can’t afford their paintings,” says Wilcox. Last year, she said, paintings that benefited Fiddlehead at auction ranged from $300 to $700.

Janet Smaldon of the Cobb’s Bridge Road says her home and orchard landscape were among the paintings featured last year. She said she and her husband Keith bought the painting at the auction.

Wendy Patterson of Gray is a professional painter. Spotted at her easel at the Allen Road at Pineland, she was in the midst of capturing in oil paint the fields and beef herd grazing below the giant barn buildings at Route 231.

Patterson teaches painting at Fiddlehead Center for the Arts. She and her husband, a sculptor, were trained in British Columbia by a master painter during a six-year apprenticeship program.

“Painting is a solitary experience of the world and what you’re looking at. It increases your energy painting with others,” says Patterson.

“It’s wonderful to be out in the fresh air with painting buddies. I don’t think of anything going on with the world,” said Prentiss Weiss of Brunswick. She and fellow artists Craig Robinson of Gorham and Roger Deering, Jr. of East Waterboro are no strangers to fresh paint fund-raisers.

The trio participated in similar events at the Tate House and Laudholm Farm in Wells.

Helene Farrar comes from a family rich in the arts with numerous painters, sculptors and master craftspeople. As a child, she loved painting in her mother’s studio. A former art teacher at Gray-New Gloucester Middle School, she is now a full-time artist living in Manchester, Maine.

“I give every year to Maine Audubon and other charitable organizations,” said Farrar, who is represented at the Gallery at the Clown in Portland and maintains a studio in Gardiner.