BELFAST— Inside Bowens Tavern in Belfast, a local’s joint with wood paneled walls and sports usually on the tube, it seems an unlikely scenario to see easels set up all around. The TV is off. Instead of drinks, plastic cups are filled with blue or purple watered down acrylic paint as people gather around to enjoy a couple of hours to explore their inner artist.

Amiee Twigg, of Searsport, a.k.a. the Paint Chic, is the one-woman operation behind pop-up Paint Nights in the Midcoast this winter, providing private paint night events, private art lessons and commissioned work.

A single mother of four, Twigg, 36, also juggles a second job. On a weeknight last week, after she finished her day job at athenahealth, she gathered all of her materials, paints, easels and brushes and headed to Bowens to host her first public Paint Night. Inside the tavern, the sold-out crowd, mostly women, sat behind their easels eagerly awaiting her instruction.

Creating a relaxed atmosphere, Twigg spent the first part of the evening with some instruction and allowed the participants to make the artistic vision their own. With the nighttime scene of northern lights as the Paint Night’s theme, Twigg offered some techniques, before turning the participants loose on their own painting.

“I give everybody a photo to go by at first; but, then, I don’t allow them to look at the photo again once they’ve started,” she explained. “Otherwise, they get stuck on comparing what they think they should be painting to the original photo.”

Living the artist life with two jobs in Maine is fairly standard, but Twigg has pushed through far harder obstacles than this.

When she was 17, her mother, who was single, developed cancer. Twigg decided to be partially homeschooled at that point, so she could take care of her mother and two younger sisters and earn some money for the family with parttime jobs.  All while raising three daughters, as well as foster children — and even through her cancer treatments — her mother pushed Twigg to pursue her artistic talents.

“Growing up, my grandfather was very supportive of the arts and bought me all of my art supplies and my mother really pushed me to develop my skills,” Twigg recalled.

Twigg’s mother passed away just nine months shy of Twigg’s graduation.

Her father, stationed in the Navy, made the difficult decision not to uproot all three girls from the stability of their hometown of Fort Fairfield in Aroostook County, so he placed them with three different family friends in Fort Fairfield to allow them to stay in their same school.

“I dropped out of my advanced art in high school because my mother had been such a driving force for me,” said Twigg. “I felt I didn’t have anybody left to create for. After I turned 18, my younger sister left the home she’d been staying in and came to live with me, so I could take care of her for awhile.”

Fast forward through two marriages and four children. Twigg was doing her best to survive and yet, the one thing that fed her through the long, struggling years, was art. 

“I was very lost for a long time,” she said. “My mother’s passing was a huge loss for our whole community.” 

At 25, she put herself through college at University of Maine at Presque Isle and earned her bachelor’s degree in art education.

“It was the first time I’d picked up a paint brush in a long time,” she said. “When I did pick up painting again, it was like coming home. It felt like suddenly I could take a deep breath again.”

She moved to the Midcoast several years ago. With the help of a friend, she was encouraged to start teaching art in private parties.

“It’s so personal to me, all of my feelings and emotions into a piece, so it was hard to put myself out there,” she said. “So, I started Paint Nights for just friends about a year and a half ago.”

The Bowens Tavern Night was her first public event and it went extraordinarily well, so much, in fact, that within days of announcing her next Paint Night there in February, it has sold out.

“This doesn't feel like a job to me because it's what makes me complete and I'm not whole without it,” she said.

Her next public offering, Parents and Picassos, is a Paint Night geared toward a parent and child pair. For more information on upcoming Paint Nights, visit her Facebook page.

 Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com