With the weather improving and people walking past their home in South Portland with greater frequency, South Portland painters Michael and Dawn Maron decided to brighten the neighborhood by displaying their paintings in their driveway, as a pop-up gallery. Beginning Thursday, they’ll be able to show their work in an actual gallery, as well.

The Marons are both represented by the Wright Gallery in Kennebunkport, which opens for the season on Thursday. They delivered a bunch of paintings last week, the result of a busy winter in their studios as well as a productive spring. The coronavirus kept the couple mostly indoors, with plenty of painting time. Dawn Maron used the time for Zoom lessons with the painter Philip Frey, while her husband buckled down on his long-term interest in capturing the colors, energy and culture of Maine’s fishing communities.

He is among the painters you are you likely to see at Portland’s Widgery Wharf or Custom House Wharf in search of subjects. When he began painting the working waterfront five or six years ago, he was attracted by the color and action of the fishing trade. The yellow, orange and blue buoys, boats and oilskins of the fishermen and women grabbed his eye. There are few subjects a painter can paint with colors right out of the tube, without mixing them, Maron said. Lobstering is one of them. “It has its own unique set of colors,” he said.

He paints with oils, acrylic and watercolor paints.

Lately, Maron has come to realize that his efforts may also have something to do with posterity and capturing a vanishing way of life. “I enjoy looking at art that shows me what life was like in the past on the Maine coast,” he said. “I like the idea of doing that for viewers in the future. Lobstermen are becoming endangered species with loss of the working waterfront and climate change and other issues. I feel it’s important to document what they are doing while they are still able to do it.”

Dawn Maron, meanwhile, favors trying to capture the personality of her four-legged friends and the color and movement of the flora of coastal Maine. She paints many paintings of dogs on the beach and cows in the field, as well as gulls in flight and fish. She paints vast fields of purple lupines and yellow-gold seagrass, and this winter has used her time to get better at painting the ocean. She works mostly with oil paints.

Her lessons with Frey have been helpful and a good use of her time, she said. “I had watched him give a demonstration down at Kennebunkport at the Arundel Inn maybe 1o years ago or so,” she said. “Under these circumstances, I thought I would use my time to focus on mentorship, and I am very happy with that decision. He’s a taskmaster, but it’s been a very focused and valuable experience.”

In addition to showing her paintings at the Wright Gallery, she also has shown at Roux and Cyr Gallery in Portland.

This summer, Michael Maron will have an online solo exhibition through the Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery, which attempts to connect artists with buyers through a series of online competitions. He has been accepted in various group competitions in the past. Beginning Aug. 15, he will get a month-long solo show. He was one of four artists selected among 66 who applied for solo shows. He plans to show 25 of his lobstering paintings. “I have never had the opportunity to have so many paintings shown at once in one place,” he said.

Meanwhile, they continue to show their work in their driveway at 28 Danforth Road in South Portland. They live close to the ocean on a street popular with neighborhood walkers. Michael Maron got the idea of placing an easel with a new painting at the end of the driveway after accepting a Facebook challenge to post photos of his art daily for a specific period of time. The response was so good, he kept posting. “Then I started thinking, why not do this visually instead of just virtually? There are a lot of people walking around the neighborhood right past our house.”

At the time of this interview, they had not sold any paintings from their driveway. But sales somehow seemed less important than simply giving people something nice to look at during their walks.

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