Tessa G. O’Brien - The American Scholar

Tessa G. O’Brien - The American Scholar

Painter Tessa G. O’Brien grew up in Maine, on a property containing marshes, fields, meadows, gardens, and forest. Today, she tries to capture her home state’s sense of “mystery, magic, and the sublime” in her art while shying away from “total nostalgia”—“I’ll paint wherever I am,” she says. O’Brien, who now lives in South Portland, Maine, began painting full time about a decade ago. “My practice is closely tied to observation, but there’s a lay…