Environmental artist Mimi Gregoire Carpenter with her new collection of work at Roux and Cyr International Fine Art Gallery in Portland. Sophie Burchell / The Forecaster

For Maine artist and beach lover Mimi Gregoire Capenter, nature’s imperfections are drawn with utmost precision and reverence.

Capenter’s new works of sea life washed on the ocean shore is on display at Roux and Cyr International Fine Art Gallery in Portland this month as the featured artist for January. The finely detailed watercolors depict ragged shells and twisted seaweed, carefully arranged and colorfully rendered. Behind the picture frame, ocean ephemera spills off the paper and onto the mat, mimicking how a handful of seashells spills out of cupped palms.

“I want the (shells) that are little broken, a little edgy, the ones that people overlook or step on. I wanted those to be the stars of compositions,” said Carpenter, 77, a Biddeford resident who loves to beach comb at Biddeford Pool.

“And that’s what started it. I just kept putting them together in different ways and thinking of them as little actors on the stage,” she said.

Growing up in Oakland, Carpenter cherished her family’s trips to the Maine coast, where time on the beach would bring them together.

“My mother was a prisoner of war at a labor camp in Germany, and her happiest times, the times when she was easiest to be around, were when we went to the beach,” said Carpenter.

Associations with the beach brought on these happy memories, prompting Carpenter to use her childhood allowance to buy shells. Later, she started collecting shells herself, no longer seeking the pristine shells sold in seaside shops but imperfect shells that were more interesting to paint.

“Anything associated with the beach, and particularly at Pemaquid, was just so wonderful and it made me feel so good,” said Carpenter.

“It finally gave me an identity as being a Maine painter. It was very important to me,” she said.

Carpenter went on to study art education at the University of Southern Maine. She stopped teaching art after her daughter was born in 1975, instead painting while the baby slept. Once her daughter entered kindergarten, Carpenter painted while she was in school and sold her work at art shows during the summers. She has continued her artistic practice across the state, completing artist residency programs in at least 53 towns in Maine.

A watercolor of blue mussels by Mimi Gregoire Carpenter. Contributed / Mimi Gregoire Carpenter

Her watercolors show arrangements of beach findings from up and down Maine’s coast: blue mussel shells decorated with Irish moss, cormorant skeletons, rock crab claws, juvenile intertidal lobsters, rockweed littered with periwinkles and smooth moon snail shells. There are few items from Maine’s beaches that Carpenter has not painted, though she keeps her mind open. Once, a marine biologist quizzed her on the organisms that she had painted until he found something she had missed: a red marine worm.

“I did manage to put the worm into another painting and contact him and say, ‘Here, here’s your worm,’” said Carpenter with a laugh.

Carpenter’s work ranges from scientific to fantastical. Other collections of her watercolors depict mermaids going about their business in the sea.

“I see myself, I think, as a mermaid. And also, they’re my feminist paintings, because they’re not glorious, glamorous. They’re workers,” said Carpenter.

“They’re almost like a dessert. I paint something really seriously for a while, work really hard, and then play with a mermaid. There’s no model for them,” she said.

Whimsy flows into Carpenter’s work for children. Her first book, “What the Sea Left Behind,” was published in 1981. Illustrating a girl finding a variety of objects along the ocean shore, the popular book has been credited with inspiring children to fall in love with Maine beaches and their treasures. Her other illustrated books include “Mermaid in a Tidal Pool,” “Of Lucky Pebbles and Mermaids Tears” and “Seashore Treasures.”

Leslie Gatcombe-Hynes, owner Roux and Cyr International Fine Art Gallery, was thrilled when Carpenter’s agent reached out about showcasing her work, as she was familiar with Carpenter’s books. When Gatcombe-Hynes’ child was young, their favorite book was “What the Sea Left Behind.”

“She has done a lot to help people look at the environment in a more in-depth way,” said Gatcombe-Hynes.

“Her work is just so detailed and colorful. I think what I really like about it is that some people just look at it and see a heap of shells. And she’s brought out all the colors that you see if you really start looking at things,” she said.

Looking closely and drawing out the beauty from imperfection is what has kept Carpenter carefully painting shells for over 40 years.

“You look at a crab with barnacles on it. It’s not beautiful, but it’s interesting. It’s the stuff you step on and ignore,” said Carpenter.

“Which I think is really important nowadays (when) people look past things. They tend to walk in a straight line. And if you walk in a straight line all the time, you never see what’s on the outside edges of it. And your concept of what’s beautiful is so changed by that,” she said.

Carpenter said ultimately, this perspective shift leads to more conscious ways of seeing and appreciation of differences – much like how she will paint five mussel shells in a painting with special attention given to each one.

“We make such a fuss when somebody’s different. Our country is tending to go in that direction where you don’t appreciate the things that are different or hurt or damaged, or all of that. You don’t look. You look so ‘surfacely’ that you never look at what’s right in front of you,” said Carpenter.

“So that’s my idea, to make people look more closely at everything, if possible,” she said.