Located in Boothbay, Maine
Ram Island Lighthouse, 13.5 x 10, Gouache on paper.
The original Ram Island Lighthouse watercolor is available for sale. Contact me for purchasing.
Ram Island Lighthouse, not to be confused with Ram Island Ledge Lighthouse, sits just off the coast of the Ocean Point neighborhood in Boothbay, Maine. The best way to see Ram Island from the mainland is to follow Ocean Point road through East Boothbay until it turns into Shore Road.
The lighthouse itself juts away from Ram Island out into the passage on it’s own jetty. It is seperate from the keeper’s cottage and out buildings.
Shore Road paralells Fisherman’s Island Passage and provides many different angles to view the lighthouse with lots of parking opportunities along the way. I wanted to get a photo where the lighthouse and buildings weren’t so spread out so we continued west. We found a great spot just before where Shore Road turned north past Card Cove toward Linekin Bay. It was low tide so I could walk way down to the edge of the rocky shore line and get some good pictures from sea level.
As I snapped one of the photos an eider duck swooped into the frame. Whenver a bird photobombs me, I always include it in a painting.
On our way out of town we happened upon a charming little spot off the road called Colorfield Coffee Co. It is a one room shack selling self-serve coffee that also doubles as a gallery for artists that live on the adjacent property. It’s definitely worth a stop if you pass by.
About Ram Island Lighthosue
Ram Island sits just over a half mile offshore to the south of the Linekin Neck peninsula in the town of Boothbay, Maine. The Island was originally used to quarantine rams to keep the sheep population under control. Due to it’s location at the convergence of Fisherman’s Passage, the waterway to the important and busy port in Boothbay Harbor, and the Damariscotta River, the US Government looked into building a lighthouse on the island.
However when Navy Captain Joseph Smith surveyed it in 1837, he noted the several nearby lighthouses (Seguin, Pond island, Hendrick’s head, Burnt island, Pemaquid, Franklin island, and Monhegan) all within 15 miles of each other made a lighthouse on Ram Island unnecessary.
Local fishermen took it upon themselves to light the passage and built a private lighthouse with volunteer keepers until 1882 when the U.S. decided to provide funds for an official lighthouse.
The lighthouse was built in 1883. It sits 100 feet offshore from Ram Island with a walkway between the island and lighthouse. (The walkway is not visible from the view shown in my painting).
Ram Island was automated in 1965 and ownership of the site was transferred to the Grand Banks Schooner Museum Trust in 1998, though the Coast Guard still maintains the navigational beacon on the lighthouse.
All the information above is from the excellent website LighthouseFriends.com.
About the Ram Island Lighthosue Painting
This painting is a little different from the last few lighthouse I’ve done (Lubec Channel, Whitlock’s Mill, West Quoddy Head). In those paintings I used a thicker application of gouache on panel, a method more akin to painting with acrylics or oils. For this Ram Island painting I used a thinner application of gouache on paper, more like using traditional transparent watercolors. This is a technique I’ve experimented with in the past and want to explore further. I enjoy being able to thin the gouache out like I would with transparent watercolors, but also be able to take advantage of it’s opaque nature.
The original “Ram Island Lighthosue” painting is for sale. 13.5″ x 10″ gouache on paper. Contact me for purchase information.
Purchase Ram Island Lightouse Painting Prints
Prints are available for purchase on my print on demand site online at https://fineartnewengland.pixels.com.