What is it about a bale of hay, a stand of trees, a line of old brick buildings, a dog door — all the seemingly disparate elements of a landscape — that an artist's eye catches and recasts on a page of paper, paint canvas, or any suitable surface that welcomes the tools of artistry, and which enchantingly gifts us a different perspective on the world.

It is a rare talent to stop in one's tracks and take the time create art from what the senses discover. It requires patience of the muse.

Of course, the artist will likely say, "It was just there," and shrug shoulders, like, what's the big deal?

That is Rick Cronin, a Belfast artist, who has taken to exploring Waldo County with his sketchpad, finding the mystery and peace of the landscape, and drawing it. You might have seen him, an older model SUV pulled off to the side of the road, a man gazing out the window at some tree or barn in the distance, sizing up dimensions and angle of light, before lowering his head to recreate on his pad.

"I draw," he said. "When I was little I admired other kids who could draw. I guess I still do. So I worked at it some. Until the last couple of years, I usually drew with some other goal — architectural drawings, jewelry designs, studies for paintings, story illustrations, but never simply to draw. It’s a lot of fun. It’s engaging. I sit in the car and try to draw what I see. Maybe what I see isn’t the same as what anyone else would see."

He talks about being an artist with modesty, but Rick has been practicing his craft with measures of success for decades. A mariner by trade, he graduated from Colgate and then Maine Maritime Academy, ultimately working on the largest oil tankers sailing foreign oceans before retiring.  But through all those years at sea, he also painted and designed, returning home to his family and studio to create.

With retirement, he and his wife, Susan, now explore, either around Maine, the country, or abroad.

"A couple of years ago Susie and I drove all over the state playing the Dirigo Treasures Game," he said. "I liked that kind of exploring /collecting. So I started exploring and drawing in locations near where I live in Belfast. It grew out of that."

It began in Fall 2024, when he picked up his sketchbook and a pencil, drove over to the old railroad station at Head Of Tide and spent a few hours drawing train cars.

"Then I did it again the next day, and the next," said Rick. "It just became a pleasant routine, part of my day."

From there, he branched further out into Waldo County, finding remote roads, some of them dirt, poking around until the muse dropped a seed.

"Did you ever paddle around a bend in a remote river and imagine you are the first person to ever see it," he asked. "That’s ideally what I’d like to feel like every time I stop the car to draw. Lots of the drawings have nothing but rocks and trees.Luckily, I like to draw rocks and trees. But, other times there is evidence of people in a scene and those elements may add an additional emotional narrative. They make you wonder."

It is Maine and there are mysteries in the land.

“Why is that sign there with nothing on it?  Or, Why is this cement mixer abandoned here? Whatever." 

Rick laughs with the wisdom of a human knowing that the more one knows, the less one knows. And does it really matter? The fun lies in the creative process.

He drives around a lot, he said, "until I stop."

What grabs him could be a change in elevation or... nice things...." he said, not easily identifying what grabs him about scene. "How I make that decision is kind of hard to say."

"And I need a place to park," he added, acknowledging practical logistics. "There are things that I see that I would like to draw, but I cannot stop there. All of the scale, the distance, is determined by sitting in the front seat of my car."

Therefore, the drawings all capture the, "same kind of distance."

That unto itself creates a quiet order to his current project, a framework of process.

And he admits, it is sometimes tough to light on a subject. Being rural: "you see a lot of the same stuff. There are a lot of trees."

People stop to find out what he is doing, if he is OK.

"Maybe I’ve been sitting for hours in their field," he said. "Those meetings are almost always great. I show someone what I’m doing and they’ll tell me what they know about the scene I’m drawing and usually something about themselves. It might be their bee hives. Or maybe their grandfather built the sawmill. Or just some novel observation like, 'I never realized that field was pretty.'"

That is the nutshell of so much of what an artist accomplishes. They shift our thinking: “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." (That quote is attributed to Pablo Picasso, and the world seems to agree he said it.)

Those chats with the folks he meets often end with offers, "do you need anything?" Or, "Do you want ice cream from John's (Ice Cream Factory in Liberty)."

"Politics never came up which was a pleasant break from the rest of the 2024 world," Rick said. "People often filled me in on the very local history of what I was drawing."

When he drew the Ducktrap Bridge at Lincolnville Beach, someone told him: "'You know, there have been three different bridges built there and each time they just add on top of the other.'"

Rick is collecting all his drawings in protective portfolios, protected by archival tissue paper. That is after he scans and then uploads hem to the computer. From there, he sends out a handful every week to a growing email list. The first installment of "Drawings of  Waldo County" was mailed Dec. 5, 2024, and he has not stopped since then. 

"Summer and other commitments (fishing and mowing) slowed me down for a while, but by fall I was back out drawing regularly," he told his followers.

How to show his drawings was not easily decided, nor was it as much fun as the drawing itself.

"I thought about a book, but to self-publish would cost more than I’m willing to pay," he said. "And, I do not know when I will stop, so I do not know how many drawings there will eventually be. Similarly, to mat, frame, and hang a show is expensive. The best solution I could come up with was this email slideshow to friends."

He has been asked to assemble them all together, so perhaps one day soon he will produce a larger slideshow to post.

"Right now I hope it’s fun for everyone to get a new edition every week," he said. "Like Buck Rogers or The Fugitive."

SIDEBAR If you would like to be included on the Drawings of Waldo County email list, contact croninme47@gmail.com