Blue Hill artist readies her showcase mural at Maine museum

By Steele Hays

After 12 months of unrelenting and concentrated work, Blue Hill artist Rebekah Raye is nearing the completion of what she calls “the most challenging project I’ve ever done” --- a 23-foot mural commissioned to be the centerpiece work of art at the newly redesigned Maine State Museum opening mid-2026.

Rebekah Raye will deliver her 23-foot mural next month at the Maine State Museum

Raye is scheduled to submit the three finished painted mural sections by October 31, and will then focus on completing seven carved animal figures that will be incorporated into the mural.

“It’s been my total focus, I haven’t been able to do any other work,” Raye said in a recent interview at her studio. “I keep asking myself ‘Is this really going to happen?’ I’ve already bought my dress for the opening next year. That day will be a big sigh of relief but also so fulfilling. I will have a lot of tears.”

Raye’s mural depicts a Maine white pine forest and features dozens of forest animals, including bears, fishers, skunks, squirrels, bobcats, owls, deer and many others, all rendered with pastels, grease-free conte crayons, and gouache watercolors, which are an opaque pigment. The mural wraps around two walls and will include seven two-dimensional carvings as well as secret compartments for kids to discover. The mural will serve as the backdrop for a hollow 16-foot-tall pine tree that children can enter and explore. 

Creating a mural of this size and complexity has been “a real learning experience,” Raye said. “One of the best parts of my research preparing for this was learning more about the murals at the Natural History Museum in New York, which are incredible. A student gave me a beautiful book on those murals or dioramas and that inspired me so much.”

Murals --- a form of wall art --- are one of the oldest forms of artistic endeavor, dating back tens of thousands of years to an era when early humans painted and drew images on cave walls of the animals they hunted and the battles they fought. They often serve as celebrations of the cultures and identities of specific local communities, exemplified by the murals of Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera and the scores of murals created for public buildings in the U.S. during the Great Depression by the Federal Art Project under the Works Progress Administration.

In her mural, Raye said she hopes “to celebrate Maine and the incredible natural world that surrounds us here.”

The mural depicts the natural wonders of Maine.

While Raye admits the project has at times been demanding and stressful, she said that it “is starting to open other doors for me and earning me more respect as an artist.”

Raye is best known in recent years for her illustrations of children’s books, several of which have won awards and critical acclaim. Now, galleries and other art organizations are thinking of her abilities in new ways, she said.

The State Museum in Augusta has been closed since June 2020 and is scheduled to reopen in summer 2026 with a renovated and redesigned interior. The building was closed to replace the heating, ventilating and air conditioning system, but workers discovered that the 55-year-old building contained significant levels of asbestos and needed to be stripped down to the bare structural frame. In addition to the museum, the renovated building will also house the State Library and State Archives, just as it did previously.

A skunk peeks out in Rebekah Raye’s mural.