Illustration Institute isn’t just about hanging pretty pictures. Founders Scott Nash and Nancy Gibson-Nash are quietly and methodically building a place where illustration is treated as a serious, egalitarian art form that connects people through story.
What some people might not realize, but is true, is that Maine is deeply welcoming, globally connected, and full of illustrators whose work spans the world and moves far beyond lighthouses and lobsters. “Maine really is a nexus for illustrators; they’re drawn here,” said Nash, giving the example of Ashley Bryan, who moved here and lived on Cranberry Island. “He came here because the Maine arts community welcomed him.”
“The cliche of the obfuscating Mainer really isn’t true,” Nash added. “We pull people in, and we’re very connected—the sheer number of illustrators here is quite amazing.”
Beyond Ashley Bryan, here are just a few of the illustrators living in Maine that Nash rattled off, giving weight to his claim that this state is rich with illustration:
- Melissa Sweet – Caldecott Honor–winning children’s book author-illustrator known for her mixed-media biographies like Balloons Over Broadway and Some Writer!
- Ben Bishop – Maine comic creator best known as one of the artists on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin and for his creator-owned series The Aggregate.
- Chris Van Dusen – Maine picture-book author-illustrator behind The Circus Ship and the If I Built… series, and illustrator of Kate DiCamillo’s Mercy Watson books.
- Francis Hamabe – The first art director for Down East who helped shape the magazine’s playful, modern visual style.
- Daniel Minter – Portland-based painter and illustrator whose work on award-winning children’s books and Kwanzaa stamp designs centers Black history, spirituality, and home.
- Tim Gasek– Animator best known for his work on the stop-motion Wallace & Gromit films.
- Jeff Badger – Maine artist and educator known for his comics and the handmade illustrated book The Wreck of the Cheseborough, plus co-leading the Maine–Aomori print exchange.
- Robert McCloskey – Beloved mid-century author-illustrator of Make Way for Ducklings and Maine classics like Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine.
This is just the tiniest sampling.
Two stories Nash couldn’t help but share, and that are worth doing the same here:
- During a Peaks Island residency with Illustration Institute, Caldecott Medalist Brian Floca found himself walking the shore as a storm rolled in, riveted by the wind, waves, and tug-of-war between awe and good judgment. That experience became the seed for Island Storm, his 2025 picture book illustrated by Sydney Smith. Two siblings head toward the sea just as the weather turns, daring each other onward, balancing the pull of wonder with the instinct to know when it’s time to head in.
- Maurice “Jake” Day grew up in Damariscotta with a passion for Maine’s woods and wildlife, and he carried that love all the way to Hollywood. When Disney first imagined Bambi as a mule deer story, Jake pushed back, insisting the hero had to be a white-tailed deer—the kind he knew from home. He headed back to Maine’s Katahdin region with his camera, sending the studio details of the forest to learn from. He also arranged to have two orphaned fawns sent to California so animators could watch them grow. The movie’s scenery and lifelike deer all trace back to this work.
One of the goals the Nashes have for Illustration Institute is to make something invisible (illustration) visible. They hope to elevate illustration similar to how Haystack Mountain School of Crafts elevated craft. “Illustration is beyond what four walls can hold, “ said Nash. “It’s the whole book—the composition, sketches, concept…the story.”
At Illustration Institute events, you don’t just see the art—you meet the people behind it, feel their enthusiasm, and watch illustration come to life in a way it rarely does with the artwork alone.
Through the Marilyn Faison Artist Residency on Peaks Island, Illustration Institute hosts more than a dozen illustrators each summer, giving them time to work in a beautiful, peaceful setting while also inviting them into the community for talks and workshops with kids and adults—all offered for free. Illustration Institute’s presence carries over to the mainland and throughout Maine in traveling exhibitions like The Great State of Illustration in Maine, which brings work by more than 90 historical and contemporary illustrators into libraries and community galleries, alongside free, hands-on programs led by master illustrators.
In the works is Connected by Story at the Portland Museum of Art, scheduled for 2027, plus plans for a new downtown archive that will help preserve and share the work of Maine illustrators for years to come.
All of it adds up to this: Maine really is a living, breathing illustration community, and Illustration Institute is one of the places where you can see that up close. You might catch a Caldecott winner talking with a second grader about sketchbooks, or a graphic novelist explaining how a story travels from Peaks Island to Japan and back.
If you love picture books, comics, graphic novels—or illustration as art in all its forms from posters and prints to digital illustration and animation—keep an eye out for Illustration Institute’s upcoming workshops, exhibitions, draw-offs, and more—and go. The illustrators are here, the doors are open, and the conversations are waiting.
Learn more at illustrationinstitute.org.
At Illustration Institute events, you don’t just see the art—you meet the people behind it, feel their enthusiasm, and watch illustration come to life.