Walk out the kitchen door onto the deck, climb the stairs leading to a space above the garage and step into Richard Field’s imagination.

To the left of the multi-room studio, one gazes upon walls covered with oil, acrylic and watercolor paintings, including one of his wife, Mardi. Small, felt-tip pen/watercolor paintings of old Quebec run down the length of a doorway leading to the “creative process” area where the ideas flow as steadily as the paint upon the canvas. Several artists tables sit in front of windows overlooking the backyard and the surrounding Auburn neighborhood. One table holds a still life, a work in progress, while another holds a box of acrylic paints, Field’s favorite medium. The right half of the studio is a room filled with planes—-remote controlled planes-—all built by the same hands that created the paintings.

It truly is a unique look into Field’s artistic mind and spirit, one which was nurtured early, when he was given his first oil painting set at the age of 10. It was just after the end of World War II and Richard painted a portrait of a combat soldier, something he had pictured in his mind, no photograph to go by. It won him five dollars at a Lewiston fair.

“It’s always been an avocation, not a vocation, for me,” stated Field. He stressed the fact that if he finds himself painting for the sole purpose of selling, he finds something else to do. He has to feel a connection with his art. If he’s painting a still life, he’ll arrange and re-arrange the objects until it feels right and then not touch it again. If working on a portrait, he insists on knowing the person, otherwise he feels like he is merely painting an image. He enjoys plein air (outdoors) painting and attended workshops on the Maine coast with noted watercolorist, Carlton Plummer.

A great influence in Field’s art was Hungarian-born Lajos Matolcsy. Matolcsy wrote, “Above all, an artist is a teacher and a missionary whose prime duty should be to stimulate the mind and the emotions, to work to make life a little nicer for everyone.” A teacher himself, Field tells his students what colors can be used or how to mix them, but not what to paint. “I can’t teach you to paint, but I can teach you how to learn to paint.”

Field spoke about one memorable experience at an art show where he exhibited his work. He had submitted several paintings for a juried art show.  His paintings were not among the judges’ choices, but one was selected for the popular award–the people’s choice. “Being chosen as the favorite painting by people attending the show far outweighed the cash prize.”

His favorite places to paint include the family camp at Sebec Lake, Reid State Park and Old Quebec City. A favorite subject was an abandoned house in a field in Dover-Foxcroft. “There’s just a feeling about old, abandoned buildings that attracts me–the loneliness, the torn curtains and doors flapping in the wind.” Something about the scene grabs at Field’s imagination and slowly transcends from the eye of the artist to the grateful eye of the beholder, telling a story as varied as the colors on the canvas.    

As for success in the art world, Richard feels “a successful artist is anyone who paints and knows that he’s accomplished what he set out to do.”

As a member of the Copley Society of Art in Boston since 1980 and awarded Copley Artist status in 1987, a Second Jurors’ Award at the Copley Artists’ Show in June 2005, and having exhibited at the Harvard Club Masters Invitational Show in 2008, Field has most assuredly earned the right to be called a successful artist.