Dahlov Ipcar lives in a setting straight out of a storybook – down a long, winding road, over a stone bridge, in an old-fashioned farmhouse surrounded by daffodils and rhododendrons. Inside, there lives a sweet, fluffy girl cat named Grindal and cacti whose flowers look like fireworks on the Fourth of July. She even has a safari room, with zebras and giraffes on the wallpaper and carved stone sculptures of animals from the African steppes.

But the peaceable kingdom she creates in her Georgetown studio is even more magical than that. On her canvases, all of the world’s animals come out to play – even some that live only in the realm of the imagination, as in the case of a tiger-striped horse (aka the hippotigrus) or the leopard with stars for spots. Chess pieces come to life and wild cats prowl in vividly patterned coats.

At 89, Ipcar still paints every day. But a show of her early work – children’s book art from 1950 to 1974 – provides a window to the present. The paintings, on view through July 3 in a group show at Ellsworth’s Courthouse Gallery Fine Art, brim with the wild exuberance that still permeates her art. A giant, Pucci-print fish jumps from the pages of her 1972 book “The Biggest Fish in the Sea.” In “One Horse Farm,” her love for animals – and vibrant colors – is obvious.

“I just tried to remember what I had liked as a child, and what I had liked was ‘Dr. Doolittle,’ anything with animals. I actually liked ‘Winnie the Pooh’,” Ipcar recalled in her Georgetown studio. “I always thought you should start children off with the best art, and the best art doesn’t always sell automatically.”

Ipcar knows from experience: the child of renowned artists William and Marguerite Zorach, she was surrounded by fine art from an early age. She also was surrounded by animals. In an essay from “Seven Decades of Creativity,” the catalog that accompanied her 2001-2002 retrospective at the Portland Museum of Art, she wrote: “Animals were also a part of our lives, even in the city. We had long-haired Maine coon cats, Dalmatian dogs, rabbits, mice and multicolored guinea pigs that produced endless babies. Also goldfish and birds – finches and parakeets. I learned to concentrate by doing my homework while the parakeets screeched and carried on.”

Not surprisingly, she also grew up with a love for farming, born of her mother’s belief that New York City was no place to spend the summer. The Zorachs started coming to Maine when Dahlov was 5, and eventually bought the land that would become the family homestead in this midcoast village.

At 18, Dahlov married Adolph Ipcar, and the couple began applying for teaching jobs in Manhattan, but they ended up in Maine. On their farm, they lived simply, raising sons Bob and Charlie in a home without electricity or running water. They loved every second of it.

“By the time the jobs turned up, we had a child and a dairy farm,” Ipcar recalled, smiling. “We survived here very happily on $600 a year. Other people around us were living on that little. I don’t think many Maine fishing villages were very affected by the Depression because they were always hardscrabble.”

Though Ipcar had moved out of the city, she maintained her contacts, including one of her former teachers, who had found work at the William R. Scott publishing house. At the time, the publisher needed an illustrator for Margaret Wise Brown’s newest manuscript, “The Littlest Fisherman.”

Given the fact that Ipcar recently had a solo show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art – at age 22 – Ipcar’s friend and former teacher thought she’d be just the artist for the job.

Looking back, Ipcar isn’t so sure. While discussing her first book project, she recalled the author’s annoyance that Ipcar’s “Littlest Fisherman” was a little bigger than Brown had envisioned.

“I had him reasonably sized and they [wanted to] reduce him to 12 inches high,” Ipcar said with a gleam in her eye. “It wouldn’t have made any logical sense. So I went back to my original idea of having him reasonably sized.”

Ipcar has always stayed true to her own vision. At a time when abstract expressionism was the height of artistic fashion, she held fast to her own brand of representation. At a time when her regular publisher rejected her own illustrated manuscript, she farmed it out to another taker – for more money.

Over time, Ipcar wrote and illustrated a total of 30 children’s books, and she also had forays into adult and young adult fiction. Though she published her last soft-cover book in 1986, “The Wonderful Christmas Tree,” her work is as relevant today as it was two, three, even five decades ago.

“When I started looking at all of it, I thought her work really stood out – the quality, plus she wrote the books,” said Karin Wilkes, owner and curator of Courthouse Gallery Fine Art. “When you look at the artwork, it really can stand on its own.”

Ipcar is not one to mince words – nor is she one to toot her own horn – but she’d have to agree.

“When it came to picture books, I just automatically fell into a certain style. Other artists at the time were doing what I thought was very good work. … Some of the best art being done at the time was being done in children’s books.”

Among Maine’s elite children’s book artists, that statement resonates today. From N.C. Wyeth and Robert McCloskey to Ashley Bryan and Melissa Sweet, the state has a long tradition of artistic excellence when it comes to children’s book illustrators. Sedgwick artist Holly Meade won a Caldecott Medal for her 1996 book “Hush! A Thai Lullaby,” while the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books awarded Kevin Hawkes of Portland its blue ribbon for “Sidewalk Circus.”

Back when Ipcar started, she had to paint her own color separations for the printing process, which wasn’t easy. But she’s never been one to take the easy route, and her illustration work allowed her to hone her vision. In recent years, her paintings have taken on a geometric, quilt-like feel that conveys joy and motion.

“I used to put in much more time, but I get more done now,” Ipcar said. “I’ve done about 10 paintings a year, all my life, but lately I’ve done 18 a year. Of course, I don’t have all these other things to do, like raising children and planting a huge vegetable garden.”

At 89, Ipcar’s life is still very much a work in progress.

On a recent, rainy afternoon, she sat on a tweed armchair in her studio. The scent of linseed oil hung heavy in the air, and two paintings – one finished, one soon to be – rested on easels before her. Her paint and supplies were neatly organized on a cart, and cacti and geraniums crowded a large window. Her cat, Grindal, curled up on her lap.

The previous day, she entertained 22 fourth-graders who came by for a visit. They were intrigued by the chess painting on display. On her square canvas, the pieces come to life. One little girl remarked that she always wins her chess games. Ipcar loses sometimes.

“I play the computer and one friend comes over and plays with me – he wins,” she said. “They tell you to play crossword puzzles to keep your mind going and I think chess will do that, too.”

If her creativity is any indication, her mind is going. And going. And going. For inspiration, she frequently researches animals, and she’s an avid reader of National Geographic. One morning last month, she looked at two blank, square canvases and had no idea what to do with them. By the end of the day, she had six ideas. And they just keep getting better.

“I think a lifetime achievement, really, is that 40 years of my art have really been my best. I started calling it my best in my 70s, and I was amazed that anyone in their 80s could still be painting,” she said. “I ran out of ideas for stories, but I haven’t run out of ideas for painting.”

Dahlov Ipcar’s work is on view year-round at Frost Gully Gallery in Freeport, 865-4505. For more information about the artist, visit www.exitfive.com/dahlov.

‘Picture Book Art’

Where: Courthouse Gallery Fine Art, 6 Court St., Ellsworth

When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, through July 3

Contact: 667-6611 or courthousegallery.com

Related events: Artist’s talk and reading with Rebekah Raye and Stephen Costanza, 2-4 p.m. Saturday, June 16. Actors from New Surry Theatre will read selected pieces from books.