Mary Ball and Jean Mann are both artists who also both enjoy the coast of Maine and live in Hancock. They’re friends, but how they approach their subjects, which are also often the same, differs.

Photography has always been a passion for Ball, who is drawn to waterscapes and landscapes, but Mann prefers putting brush to canvas with oils. They collaborate in their crafts to create works with the same subjects but in different mediums, and the results make for comparisons to be made in the Daniels Room at the Hancock Town Library this month.

“Collaboration: Photography and Painting” is an exhibit that seems to ask the observer a question probably unintended by the artists – which does one prefer? Ball’s capture of “Morse River,” an estuary in Maine, shows a tidal area with pines rising from the shore on a day when the sun just can’t break through. Mann’s work with a brush offers all the color and placidity of the same scene, with the sky coming down to meet the sea almost seamlessly.

With “Another Rye Pond,” Ball offers up a glassy surface in the failing days of summer when a few trees on shore have begun turning. In terms of her take on the same scene, Mann uses color in the water and the sky, but her portrayal of the reddening also looks like a photograph. 

Mann said that she enjoys “setting up her easel where a setting catches her eye,” but has no professional training in the craft. A member of Oil Painters of America and Monadnock Art, she said, “I paint for myself and the viewer’s own journey.” While some artists begin with a sketch, Mann prefers a less-planned approach.

“I let the painting guide me into the exciting discovery of color, light and the addition of other subjects,” she said.

Mann has been part of the Monadnock Art Tour, exhibited at the Dublin Community Center and curates a gallery at Del Rossi’s Restaurant in Dublin. 

Ball captures the Monadnock region as well as the coast with her camera, and her friendship with Mann spawned their collaboration.

“Sometimes I see something, and I’ll think ‘Jean may like to paint that,’ and I’ll take a photograph,” she said.

In the exhibition, the artists’ works on the same subject are side by side, and a number of visitors found themselves studying one, then the other, comparing them.

Not all of the artists’ works are of shared subjects.  One of Ball’s photograph’s shows an orange, sinking sun reflected in a tide that has also waned. A painting by Mann shows a very different sea, one exploding in foam as it encounters a stubborn boulder. 

This is the first time that Ball and Mann have collaborated on an exhibition. Their works can be seen in the Daniels Room at the Hancock Town Library through June 25.