Finding Joy
Blue Door Gallery, York, ME • blue-door-gallery.square.site • Through November 9, 2025
Marcia Crumley is a painter of joy and texture, whose landscapes are celebrations of color. She paints encaustic, using melted beeswax, mixed with pigment and resin. This process enables her to incorporate depth and texture into her work.
“I love the meditative processes of watching the wax melt, slowly building up layer upon layer of paint, fusing the layers with a blowtorch, and then carving into and scraping away the wax. I use pottery tools to create texture and patterns in my paintings, bringing me back full circle to my favorite childhood pastime of throwing pottery on a wheel. The layering and mark-making invite the viewer to look closely and spend a little time with the piece, hopefully providing them with the same sense of calm that creating the art provided me.”
Crumley lives in Cape Elizabeth, ME, and retains a studio in Boston, MA. She graduated from Yale with a degree in economics, and followed a practical path until gradually accepting that she needed to follow her heart and devote her life’s work to being an artist.
“There comes a time in one’s life, when there isn’t time to do anything else but what you really want to do, that which brings you joy. I felt it was imperative to honor it.” Crumley pauses, and continues, “If you come to your passion later in life, you have a lot more focus…when I was younger, in high school, I was drawn to pottery and writing. I didn’t paint, so when I found paint, I was pleasantly surprised that I had this talent. Discovering this world of working with color, was like discovering a different part of myself that I didn’t know was there.”
She started small, but was very focused, and with her devotion and love of painting, success began to find her. She writes a fascinating blog which helps with her own process and allows her to connect with others. She has found that people are interested in the artist’s process. She spends lots of time outdoors, drinking in the beauty of nature, watching the weather, the mountains, light, ever observing. “I take lots of photos,” Crumley notes, “But I don’t look at them so much, rather, I paint from memory, and think of how I felt.”
Several of her new paintings for an upcoming show at Blue Door Gallery in York, ME, are of night skies. Entranced by nature’s beauty, Crumley muses,
“It is impossible to not be inspired by nature. How can you be outside at night and look up and not say ‘wow!’
—Paige Farrell