For Maine artist Joanne Parent, the ocean is not just a subject—it is a presence, alive with memory, light, and motion. Known for her luminous seascapes and landscapes, she captures the fleeting atmospheres of coastal Maine: a winter sunset dissolving into color, the calm of tidewater at dusk, or storm clouds parting to reveal radiance. Working primarily in oils, she seeks what she calls the “aha moment”—that instant when sky, sea, and spirit align.Joanne was born in Omaha, Nebraska, at Offutt Air Force Base. When she was eight, her family moved to Belfast, Maine, where the tidal inlets and forests of Penobscot Bay became her earliest inspiration. Encouraged by her father, photographer Neal Parent, she began drawing pencil portraits, learning to see the delicate balance of light and shadow—an artistic foundation that would shape her painting.After graduating early from Belfast Area High School as one of two winners in the State of Maine Art Competition, Joanne was offered a scholarship to the Maine College of Art. Instead, she chose the sea, spending nearly a decade sailing as a chef and captain while living in Mallorca and French Polynesia. Immersed in beauty and motion, she became an avid diver and surfer, experiences that continue to inform her painterly vision.“I never really know where I’m going when I begin a painting,” she explains. “My process is intuitive—I start in one place, and it often ends up somewhere completely unexpected.”Joanne returned to Midcoast Maine in 2000 and later studied at the Maine College of Art. Today, she paints from her studio based at her off grid home on the water, where music often plays alongside her brushwork. “I listen to everything from jazz to eighties pop to classical,” she says. “The energy of the music absolutely influences the mood of the painting.”While painting remains her primary focus, she never hesitates to set sail off Maine’s coast, spending summers on the Atlantic—a body of water as much a part of her life as it is her art.Listen to Joanne speak about her life at sea, and the intuitive flow of paint and light, on Radio Maine.