Gail Spaien (b. 1958, Hartford, Connecticut) is a Maine-based artist whose paintings of observed and imagined places celebrate the beauty of everyday acts and the quiet rhythms of daily life. Her use of decorative patterning and subtly off-kilter perspectives invites viewers into a conversation about the idea of home and the gap between idealized utopias and lived experience. Created through repetitive, handcrafted processes, the way Spaien makes her work reflects practices of slowness, attention, and care. Her paintings offer a hopeful vision and the possibility of a gentler way of living.

Drawing inspiration from the landscapes, gardens, and vernacular architecture of seaside New England, Spaien’s work features the cottage as a site of contemplation, rest, and contact with nature. The images she composes blend still life with landscape, often depicting a unification between the interior and exterior of a place. The spectators of her paintings become the inhabitant of the space, arousing a feeling of familiarity, warmth, and safety.

The artist’s wide breadth of knowledge of visual arts and history informs her work in myriad ways, taking inspiration from a variety of source materials. Her source material ranges from the animated movies of Hayao Miyazaki and Walt Disney, to the symbolism of Dutch Still Life paintings. She references quilts, samplers, mourning paintings, Japanese embroidery, early American wooden furniture, wooden boats, and the architecture of simple cottages. The meditative and precise quality of paint-by-numbers, which she did as a child, also informs her work, as well as her admiration of early American folk artists, the Pattern and Decoration movement,Intimism and the ancient artists of Ukiyo-e.

Gail Spaien received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and BFA from the University of Southern Maine. Spaien has been the recipient of numerous fellowships including the Ucross Foundation (2024), Varda Artist Residency Program, Djerassi Foundation Resident Artists Program, Millay Colony for the Arts and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. After thirty years as faculty at the Maine College of Art and Design she is full-time in the studio.

Spaien’s solo exhibitions include Taymour Grahne Projects, London, (2023); Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME; Mrs. Gallery, NY; Nancy Margolis Gallery, NY; Ellen Miller Gallery, Boston, MA; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; Group exhibitions include Taymour Grahne Projects, London; Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME; studio e, Seattle, WA; Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA; University of New Hampshire Museum, Durham, NH; Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; and the DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA. Her work has been acquired by public and private collections, including OZ Art NWA, Eli Khouri Collection, Memorial Sloane Kettering Cancer Center, NY; Fidelity Investments, MA; Portland Museum of Art, ME; University of New England, ME; University of Southern Maine, ME.