KENNEBUNKPORT (NEWS CENTER Maine) — Bob Paine is known as George H.W. Bush’s artist and dear friend in Kennebunkport.
The 95-year-old painter and his wife, Evelyn, knew the 41st President and his wife, Barbara, for more than three decades, and painted a number of portraits and landscapes for the family.
“I’ll remember him as a man who gave everything he had to this country and everybody in it, and so well-respected not only here but all over the world,” Evelyn Paine said.
One of those paintings of Walkers’ Point, affectionately known by Bush Sr. as his “anchor windward” hangs above the fireplace in the home on the peninsula.
Evelyn Paine said the couple would often go out to dinner at Mabel’s Lobster Claw in town and take turns paying.
She laughed as she remembered a moment when it was the Paine’s turn to pay, and President Bush jokingly said he would have ordered another lobster if he had known they were footing the bill.
The couple got to know the Bush family over the years, sharing laughs and art.
They said the news of the President’s passing just eight months after his wife’s death meant the end of a friendship and the end of a chapter for our country.
“There is no one who has done more for this country and the good of this world than George Herbert Walker Bush,” Bob Paine said.
The Paines spent most of the day Thursday welcoming guests to their downtown gallery and sharing their personal memories of the Bushes—memories they hope live on in his paintings.
