Radio Maine with Dr. Lisa Belisle

The founder of Maine Street Design Co., longtime interior designer Brett Johnson has many loyal clients across the state. Raised on the Maine coast, he has a deeply rooted family and personal history on Bailey Island. Building on the success of his Portland design studio and design center, he opened a new retail location in Bath, Maine in the midst of Covid, and has continued to grow his business...

Sally Thomas has dedicated her life to healing others, in myriad and evolving ways. Through her work as a nurse, and then a nurse practitioner, she came to understand the importance of emotional connection. With that in mind, she pursued a Doctor of Ministry, and initiated the “Wondering Together Project,” which brings families together through shared conversation. Learn more about Sally Thomas, a...

While drawing on historical ways of painting, Blair’s work explores the landscape in varying degrees of abstraction. As a gardener and student of garden design, she is fascinated with the idea of viewing the landscape from a high, sweeping vantage point. The marks on the paintings become a shorthand for the experience of being in the landscape. Along with plants, the sky, mountains, and water, the...

Maine native Dr. Jennifer Palminteri, a pulmonologist with MaineHealth in South Portland, recently discovered the joy of bringing original art into her home. Jen is no stranger to creativity, having–like most of her medical colleagues–engaged in this extensively while responding to the rapidly evolving virus that precipitated a global pandemic. She offers a balanced and reassuring perspective from...

Tony Cox is a fixture in the southern Maine art community. He and his wife Heather have owned and operated Casco Bay Frames and Gallery in Portland for nearly two decades. Tony has combined an educational background in psychology and studio art with practical, hands-on experience working in human resources at LL Bean to create success for their Back Cove area business. Tony enjoys working with his...

The daughter of a small business owner, Ashley Tucci has long had an enterprising spirit. Even while fully engaged in her successful corporate career, she was considering how she could build a business for herself. She imagined focusing her considerable talents in sales and brand building in a way that would satisfy her entrepreneurial calling and sustain her young family. Ashley found this opport...

Previously a celebrity and on-air makeup artist in New York City, COVID caused Nikki Fontaine to seek refuge in the quiet coastal Maine town of Damariscotta. No stranger to New England, Nikki grew up in a creative family in rural Massachusetts. Influenced by their filmmaker father, she and her brother (a fellow makeup artist who specializes in ‘monster’ effects) followed the bright lights to NYC....

Traveling can create space, enlarge perspective and enrich the soul.  In this episode of Radio Maine, our host, Dr. Lisa Belisle, records a brief podcast from her recent trip to the Grenadine Islands where she had the space to consider the art and the artists she’s spoken with in dozens of episodes since early 2021.  “Art is interesting because you have the opportunity to see where an artist was a...

Joanne Parent embodies creative energy. Her widely varied background includes many years as a musician–she has been the lead singer in nearly 20 bands—and an early career as a charter sailing captain. This latter experience proved beneficial to her work in visual art. When the responsibilities of her young family necessitated a return to land, Joanne brought the light-filled sea vistas to her canv...

Whitney Heavey’s family has an intergenerational appreciation of the ocean. Her grandfather was the captain of the (then) fastest transatlantic ocean liner, the SS United States, before air travel became widespread; her father was a navigator for the Navy’s first nuclear submarine. The sea features prominently in Whitney’s work as an artist, and has helped her heal after a series of recent hardshi...

In this week’s episode, our host, Dr. Lisa Belisle, reflects on the collaborative effort that makes Radio Maine possible.  Beginning in the midst of a global pandemic as a primarily distance-based project, the show has evolved to include in-person interviews, and now has more than 60 episodes. A lover of books, art, people and their stories, Lisa continues to see her work with the Portland Art Gal...

For Dr. Sunil Malhotra, being surrounded by art that evokes a certain emotional response helps him “right the ship.” As a practicing surgeon and the director of the newly created Congenital Cardiac Surgery program at Maine Medical Center in Portland, his work life has a high level of intensity. Fortunately he was able to draw on the experience of multiple physician family members, including his fa...

Newly graduated from the University of Vermont in Burlington, Sarah Ingraham took a calculated risk and moved to Brooklyn, New York to pursue a career in art. After working briefly in the wallpaper business, then as an artist’s assistant, she decided to hone her own craft full-time. The Maine native now paints in a 10 x 10 foot space in her apartment, and receives regular support from friends from...

Paula Stern kept her passion for sculpting hidden from her family, friends and colleagues for many years–at one point even her husband was unaware. With a masters degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University in Boston, and a PhD in International Studies from the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Medford, Mass, her professional career had been more globally oriented. After time spe...

Allen Bunker turned to art as a counterbalance to his fast-paced career in residential construction. Through experimentation and persistence, Allen developed a unique artistic approach. He soon left construction behind to open an art gallery in the coastal town of Boothbay Harbor, Maine. He learned much over the years that the gallery was open, including the fact that collectors loved the art he c...

Originally from England, artist Christina Thwaites has lived around the world, enjoying time in such far flung locales as Scotland, France, Spain, Italy, Indonesia, Netherlands and Australia. Painting has long provided a means of finding home wherever she lands. Now living in one of Maine’s university towns, Christina has recently been inspired by the rugged coastline of the Pine Tree State. She n...

Growing up in the land of the Razorbacks, it is perhaps not surprising that James Bonner is a former football player and sports enthusiast. More intriguing is the longstanding attraction that this Little Rock, Arkansas native has felt toward Maine art and artists. This first manifested as an attraction to the work of the Wyeth family. Drawn to Andrew Wyeth in particular, James began a decades-long...

Emma Wilson has become intimately familiar with the challenges of managing an art gallery during a pandemic, including the potential impact on the livelihoods of artists. With a roster of over 55 Maine-centric artists, the importance of continuing to meet high standards at the Portland Art Gallery cannot be overstated.  As the director, Emma worked with her team to meet and exceed these standards,...

Artist Scott Bowe has long been inspired by the ocean. He spent his formative years enjoying summers at the coastal Maine property his great grandfather acquired. As a college student, he participated in the Semester at Sea program, where he expanded his senses as he traveled around the world.  It wasn’t until he was pursuing an acting career in Los Angeles that Scott began to experiment with art....

With her graduate degree in clinical psychology, artist Laurie Fisher has been trained to look for, and understand, the factors that fundamentally make us who we are, and who we might be. She has used these in her own creative development, as both a writer and an artist. Laurie speaks eloquently about her creative path, the uncertainties that plague most artists, and the joy of meeting advocates a...

By the time Sage Tucker Ketcham entered high school in Burlington, Vermont, she and her mother had moved over 20 times. Their travels took them throughout the U.S. and Europe, with memorable stays in England and Italy.  Sage’s mother, herself an artist and musician, made sure that art played an important part in their experience. Sage went on to obtain a more formal art education from the Maine Co...

Matthew Barter has always approached his artistic training, and his life, in a unique manner. Homeschooled in rural Downeast Maine, his parents exposed him to art, art galleries and the working waterfront from a young age. His father, himself an artist and fisherman, served as one of his early role models. Over time, Matt moved from working construction jobs to becoming a full-time artist and scul...

Ed Wintner had more than a fleeting passion for art while in high school, and took his studies seriously at the Philadelphia College of Art (now part of the University of the Arts) during those years. His career would, however, take a very different path.  After earning a PhD in organic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, he joined the fast-paced biotechnology wo...

Artist MJ Benson loves swimming in the ocean, and the accompanying profound, visceral sense of the balance between breathing and not.  What she experiences so deeply in that realm is reflected in the play between light and dark in her abstract landscapes. MJ is highly attuned to emotional contrasts:  her sorrow over her  brother’s death from cancer in the midst of COVID generated  a renewed apprec...

​​Anne Heywood was an accomplished full-time artist and gallery owner when, in February 2020, her husband of thirty years passed away suddenly. Still navigating her grief, she assumed the role of CEO of her late husband’s engineering firm as a global pandemic unfolded. Her resilience and fortitude kept the business moving forward, enabling The Thompson & Lichtner Co., Inc. to celebrate its 125th y...