About the Artist
A lifetime spent learning to see.
Barney Cutrer has been painting for more than fifty years — from murals across New England to plein-air canvases in the fields around Buxton, Maine, to an iPad that now serves as his sketchbook. The subject has never changed: whatever nature is doing that day.
In the studio, Buxton
The young painter, among his canvases
Chapter I · Beginnings
Born in Spain. Raised everywhere.
Born in Spain to an Air Force family, Barney grew up on the move — Nebraska, Louisiana, a childhood measured in postings rather than hometowns. He was drawing by his early teens, and the habit never let go. The traveling gave him something most painters spend a lifetime chasing: an eye trained on many different kinds of light.
It was Maine that finally held him. He came east to study, earning his Fine Arts degree — and found the coastline, fields and seasons he is still painting today.
Chapter II · The Working Artist
A brush that paid the bills.
With a growing family to support, Barney put his skills to work — commercial art, painting and decorating, any job a steady hand and a good eye could do. The craft never sat idle; it just clocked in.
The murals came out of those working years: the cafeteria of the Saco Middle School, murals on the pier at Old Orchard Beach, and commissioned walls throughout New England — paintings meant to be lived with by whole towns, not single collectors.
Saco Middle School
Cafeteria mural
Old Orchard Beach Pier
Pier murals
SeaPoint mural
On the job — hanging paper
A steady hand, still at it
The Cutrers, Buxton
Chapter III · The Long Pause That Wasn't
Seven children. Six boys, one girl. The brush never far.
Barney set aside the career — not the craft — to raise a family. He and his wife, married 47 years, brought up seven children in Buxton. Through all of it he kept painting and kept showing: local walls, seasonal exhibits, work made in the hours a full house allows.
Most artists get a decade to develop a voice. Barney got a lifetime — and the patience that comes with one.
Chapter IV · Still Exploring
Fifty years in, still learning new instruments.
Today the work happens wherever the light is good. When the weather allows, he paints en plein air in the fields, orchards and coastlines around Buxton. He is partially color-blind and a devoted fan of color anyway — drawn to Impressionism, to oils and acrylics and watercolor, and lately to an iPad Pro that has become his sketchbook. New tools, same eye.
Painting the lilacs, en plein air
Forsythia wind, before the rain
“My favorite subjects usually have to do with nature — depending on my mood.”
See the work →