Māris Valdis Platais, 87, of Carlisle, passed peacefully with his loving family by his side on Thursday, July 18 at Emerson Hospital in Concord after a three-week battle with Covid.
Māris was born in Jelgava, Latvia in 1936 and was the youngest son of Voldemārs and Alma Platais. In 1944, Māris and his family fled Latvia as wartime refugees bound for Germany and ultimately arrived in Boston July 29, 1949. Māris, his parents, grandmother, and his older brother Tālavs (Andy) grew up in Roslindale Square in a third-floor apartment and began their life in America. A few years later his family bought their first home in West Roxbury where his parents lived out their lives.
Māris graduated from Boston Tech High School in 1956 and began to pursue his passion of art. In 1958, he entered the United States Marine Corps to repay his service to the country that saved his family. He was later honorably discharged in 1970 as a first lieutenant after remaining in the USMC Reserves.
In 1964 Māris met the love of his life, Elizabeth Page Elliott, in a class at Tufts University. Liz convinced Māris to cut class and attend the Boston Symphony Orchestra rehearsal series with her where their love began to blossom. Māris was a graduate of the school of the Museum of Fine Arts and received a bachelor’s degree in education from Tufts University while his future bride became an occupational therapist. They both graduated from Tufts in 1965.
Māris and Liz were married in 1966 at the First Parish in Concord and began life in Newton. In 1968, Liz’s mother told the couple about a Cape for sale in the neighborhood and Māris and Liz made an offer on Christmas Eve and moved to Carlisle to start their family. They lived happily in this home for 44 years, raising their two daughters and numerous four-legged friends.
Māris worked as an artist for Dennison Manufacturing Company (now Avery) in Framingham until the department was closed in 1984. This afforded him the opportunity to expand and focus on his fine art with some supplemental graphic design and commercial art on the side.
Māris began returning to Latvia every few years beginning in 1994 and reconnected with the friends and family he had left behind during World War II. As Māris’s fine art network grew to an international level, he exhibited in galleries around the world and from coast-to-coast in the U.S. A one-man show in his birthplace of Jelgava, Latvia in 2015 brought Māris’s life full circle as the display was shown in the church tower which once belonged to the Lutheran church where his parents were married and where he was baptized as a baby.
Māris continued to paint and teach throughout the Boston area, where his primary subjects were the woods, fields and stonewalls of New England and the coast of Maine. He was an avid sailor and his paintings of ships and schooners included all of the correct rigging meticulously drawn for accuracy by a man who knew all of the ins and outs of life on the sea.
Māris won numerous national and international awards, among which were several awards for excellence at the Mystic International Marine Art Competition, Mystic, Connecticut, and many awards from the National Park Foundation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He won the top award in graphics several times from the Academic Artists Association. He was selected as Artist-in-Residence at the Wilderness Workshop in Aspen, Colorado and Ocean House in Watch Hill, Rhode Island.
He was a member of the Guild of Boston Artists, the Academic Artist Association, the American Society of Marine Artists and was a distinguished member and past president of the Concord Art Association. He taught drawing at the MFA for almost 20 years and taught and lectured in art groups in Eastern Massachusetts, most recently in Lexington and Wellesley. He was represented by many galleries in New England.
In 2009, after the passing of Liz’s mother, they sold their home on Bedford Road and moved into River Road Farm. The first order of business was remodeling the old dairy office into a new studio so Māris could continue to paint and draw, this time with a view of the horse pastures instead of the pine trees around the corner.
When Māris wasn’t behind his easel or steering his beloved Quill sailboat at the family home in Georgetown, Maine, he was often a horse show dad to his wife and daughters and could be seen driving the trailer or holding onto a random horse on a lead rope (although he never cleaned a stall in his life and only tossed a flake of hay once or twice). His support for his girls’ sport was unwavering but every time a new horse arrived at the farm; a new boat suddenly appeared in the driveway.
Māris loved his four grandchildren and was fortunate to spend many days teaching them tidbits of wisdom from boating to learning Latvian or just telling stories of his youth. He loved the many cats and dogs who passed through his life and his beloved Welsh corgi, Sailor of Sagadahoc Bay. Māris was a huge Red Sox fan and lover of classical music and Strauss waltzes. He always had music playing while he painted and a wood stove burning to keep his studios cozy.
Māris is survived by his loving wife of almost 58 years, Elizabeth (Elliott) Platais; his daughter Cynthia Platais Bryan of Carlisle, her former husband Marvin and their two daughters Rachel and Ashley of Hudson; his daughter Rachel Platais Medrek and her husband Paul and their two sons John (Jack) and Benjamin of Somers, Connecticut; his cousin Austra Kelers of Kentucky; and many, many cousins, nieces and nephews.
Public visiting hours for Māris will take place on Monday, July 29 from 3 to 6 p.m. at Dee Funeral Home, 27 Bedford Street, Concord Center. This will be followed by a memorial service for family and close friends. Coincidentally, this is the same day he stepped off the U.S.S. General Blatchford onto Boston’s Commonwealth Pier exactly 75 years ago. Private interment with the immediate family will take place at Green Cemetery in Carlisle.
In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory may be made to the American Heart Association or the charity of one’s choice.
Arrangements are entrusted to Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord. For his online guestbook, visit www.DeeFuneralHome.com.
