By Sara Anne Donnelly
Photos by Meredith Perdue
From the Summer 2022 issue of Maine Homes by Down East
During summer open houses at Meredith Perdue’s backyard art gallery, in South Portland, guests can view for-sale works arrayed on the interior and exterior walls of her sky-blue 1750 Cape; inside a matching garden cottage; and on the barn door of a tidy moss-colored shed. While they mull the offerings, they can stroll a pebble path studded with raised beds that leads to a seating area with a firepit and a cedar-barrel sauna, as their kids play in the fenced yard or swing in a hammock strung between a willow and a Norway spruce. The experience at The Willard Gallery is intimate, Perdue says, because, well, so is art — “it’s a window into what inspires us, what excites us, what moves us.”
For Perdue, the emotional response was first triggered when she was 11 years old, observing her sister, a promising painter who died tragically in a car crash at age 17, work in her studio. “I love art and I always have since I was little, watching my sister,” says Perdue, who, as a photographer, has long enjoyed promoting artist clients. In May of 2021, she opened her by-appointment art consultancy and gallery, featuring works by nearly two dozen of her favorite painters from Maine and beyond. (The entire catalog is also available online.) Among them: gauzy pastel-colored landscapes by Sorrento’s Claire Cushman, textural still lifes and seascapes by Lubec’s Stephen Dinsmore, and expressive terriers and spaniels by celebrity pet-portrait artist Robert James Clarke. Often, Perdue will bring pieces to area collectors so they can hang them up, live with them for a day, and see if they possess that ineffable element of belonging.
Other clients fall in love right in her backyard. “It’s really amazing to watch someone respond to a painting,” Perdue says. “They stop in their tracks. There’s a gasp or a comment. Inviting people into this space, witnessing their reactions, it’s something really beautiful.”
The Willard Gallery is open by appointment.
