FEORM (which is Old English/Middle English for FARM)

paintings of 2012/13 are about our deeper roots and relationships with animals and

farms; a focus that was instigated by the proactive, local food movement within my

community. Maine has a history of dairy farming, so cows grazing in pastures are

common enough everywhere. That was a transition point from landscape to farm.

In 2012, I spent five months ( basically a growing season ) making frequent visits to a pig

farm near my home. Farm life became fascinating as both creature and farmer live and

work for the rest of us. Farmers go from sunup well into the evening, as long as there is

enough daylight. The rhythms on a farm are hour by hour, task by task, animal and

farmer in a marriage of short duration, one season. It’s sweaty, smelly and very physical

work - breeding, butchering, building. Planting and harvesting, under a hot sun, backbreaking.

So interesting to see from the sidelines.

Being around farms and centering my work around things rural is a daily reminder and

stabilizer. In a world that feels complicated and often insecure, a simple view of cows

waiting at the gate to come in for the evening milking, or nudging a hen off her nest to

claim an egg, somehow anchors one’s perspective of events in an direct, immediate

way.

Kerstin Engman was born in New England, educated at the Maine College of Art, The

Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Pennsylvania. She has traveled

extensively throughout Europe and taught in the Hungarian Public Schools. In 1997, she

founded Project Kalocsa, a cultural exchange between Kalocsa, Hungary and her

hometown of Belfast, Maine.

Engman has lectured and taught at various colleges throughout the Northeast. She lives

in midcoast Maine and teaches in the Art Department at the University of Maine in

Orono.