Artist Bob Rose didn’t set out to capture the soul of Boothbay Harbor when he sat down one summer day with a huge pad of paper. “My wife was working downtown at the Boothbay (Region) Art Gallery, and I’d gotten off work in the Southport boat yard. I drove into town and had a few hours to kill, so I started drawing the town.” The result is a stunning piece, comprising a series of 13 panels creating a 4’ by 30’ mural, that has been acquired by the Opera House at Boothbay Harbor. On permanent display now in the upstairs gallery, visitors are encouraged to come take in its whimsy and wonder.

The project took on a life of its own, according to Rose. “I climbed up to a little balcony spot near the Christmas Tree Shop, out of the traffic, where I had a view of the square, and I started drawing it, about life size, you know, as if you were just sitting there.” Rose found himself drawn back to the town most days, for a couple of hours at a time, to record what he saw. “I kept adding to the pad and kept drawing the town until I ran out of paper and then I just kept adding to the paper, which got to be a scroll. I went down one street, and then the next street, which connected to the next. And I met a lot of people.”

Curiosity was understandable, as passersby watched Rose in his perch with his increasingly dramatic patched-together collection of drawings. Each afternoon would end with a drink at Gray’s Wharf, where the bartender would ask to see what Rose had painted that day. One memorable exchange was with a man who scrambled up the embankment to Rose and when he saw the manner in which Rose was creating his work, shared a fascinating analogy. “He said to me that what I was doing was very similar to what the Chinese emperors used to do on their trips in China. They would have a series of artists with scroll who would just follow them around and draw the trip.”

Absent a troop of scribes to manage his scroll, Rose eventually took his cobbled-together masterpiece to Supplies Unlimited in Damariscotta, where they were able to use their blueprint machine to create a single, unified document. Once Rose mounted the work onto wooden panels that fit together in a single mural, though, there were few places where he could exhibit the work. Displaying one or several panels alone robbed the work of its dramatic scope and impact. The soaring space at the historic Opera House provides the perfect venue for all to enjoy the piece in its entirety.

Opera House board member Mark Spencer put the mural’s acquisition in motion when he recalled having seen the panels stacked in the back of Rose’s gallery on River Road a few years back. He corralled board president Kari Smith and board member Joe McCammon, along with Opera House volunteer Susan Brackett, to go look at the piece with him. “Our timing was incredible,” Spencer says. “They were going through the rubble of the house as they transitioned to living at Miles for health reasons, and he just happened to be there that day.”

Rose had resigned himself to the idea that the mural would be going into storage, and was delighted with the offer to install it at the Opera House instead.

Words can not adequately summon the magical nature of the piece; far beyond simply depicting Boothbay Harbor, Rose’s imagination is on full display in the embellishment that gives the work its endlessly-intriguing depth.

As Rose puts it, "There's a lot more going on to a person with imagination than just the tourists, you know–to me anyway. I thought there were an awful lot of people who had visited the town years ago, and they're still around, but we can't see them. I’m saying to myself, ‘They're still walking around’, because I'm a believer in ghosts. These people are still walking around, some of them. And I thought, ‘Well, I think I'll show some of them coming to life’.”

And so he did, along with injecting fantastical nods to local culture and to more universally familiar figures, like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Mary Poppins, and the Morton Salt Girl. One of Rose’s favorite features is a joyful porpoise diving from a rooftop while a trio of admiring turtles and a mesmerized young boy take in the spectacle from the street; a maestro directs the show from the next panel. Collaged newspaper headlines and atmospheric color swirl throughout. A nostalgic, yet humorous, nod to the film “The Red Balloon” has a clutch of balloons making their way up to the Goodyear blimp, seemingly in search of the Mother Ship. The ubiquitous “Wow!” from Hannaford’s advertising even makes an appearance.

A prominent theme is that of music, with notes wafting through the air across the panels, and Rose had a poetic explanation for that. “I have [The Peanuts’] Schroeder playing the piano downtown because I associate music with art. Artists, they're coloring the air, and I'm coloring the paper.“

An artist who can paint music, and ghosts, and make-you-smile fanciful imagery is a true original, and that is Bob Rose. His passion project only ended because, he says, “The leaves started the fall, and it was like uh-oh, time to go.” He takes his messages from the universe, and brings them to his viewers in living, breathing wonder.

A contribution from The Friends volunteer group, whose popular coffee and desserts are available at performances, helped make the mural’s acquisition possible.

The artwork can only be truly appreciated in person and with time to immerse oneself in the intricacies; no two viewings will ever be the same. The Opera House is open Wednesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (enter at the Townsend Avenue entrance), and during performances. 

To watch and listen to Rose discuss the mural, go to https://bit.ly/4eaQWnN. For more information on the Opera House and the event schedule, go to https://boothbayoperahouse.com/.