BRUNSWICK, Me. — Maine has loomed large in the work of numerous American painters, from Marsden Hartley, John Marin and Edward Hopper to Andrew Wyeth, Alex Katz and Lois Dodd. But William Wegman is probably the only Conceptual artist — if an erstwhile one — to have fallen hard for the state, as evidenced by “William Wegman: Hello Nature,” a beguiling exhibition at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art here.

Mr. Wegman made his reputation in the early 1970s as a pioneering if invariably amusing and accessible multimedia artist of the Conceptual kind. He was especially well known for simple captioned drawings that have rightly been compared to James Thurber’s; for short, hilarious videos inspired by late-night DIY television commercials; and most of all for videos and photographs involving a camera-loving Weimaraner named Man Ray, an exemplar of a breed of dog that, more than most, excels at physical comedy as much as at a slightly melancholic dignity.

But in 1985 Mr. Wegman committed a kind of apostasy, venturing back into painting after having abandoned it in graduate school for more orthodox Post-Minimal endeavors. What’s more, he did it in the peace and quiet of the Maine woods, far from the madding crowds of the New York art world. Mr. Wegman’s return to this ancient medium may be one reason that he has escaped the excessive hero worship that is reflexively lavished on Conceptual artists and other veterans of the early 1970s these days. His refusal to take himself or his art too seriously, which is a major through line of his achievement, may also be a factor.