New work by Viega and Dolan at Pemaquid Art Gallery

The Pemaquid Group of Artists offers an opportunity for art lovers this summer who may view and purchase the group’s art through its expanded website, www.pemaquidartgallery.com, as the gallery remains closed due to COVID-19.

Here we compare and contrast the work of two member artists, Steve Viega and Dianne Dolan, to illustrate the wide range of styles encompassed by the 30 artists in the group. 

Steve Viega creates elegant 3D work in wood and has worked with wood most of his adult life. He started with a degree in forestry from Paul Smith’s College of Arts & Sciences in New York’s Adirondack Mountains and a love for finish carpentry soon developed. He honed that love and soon became involved in the boatbuilding industry in Maine where he worked as a joiner in famed boatyards in the mid coast.

In 1999, he opened his own business, Steve Viega Woodworks, in Walpole, where he offers a wide range of fine woodworking services, marine and residential, and also opened a gallery of his woodturnings. After a fire in 2016 destroyed his studio, gallery and new house, he rebuilt his business on the same site.

Today he continues to offer the same range of services, including furniture making, restoration and repair, specialty woodwork, as well as the repair and restoration of small boats and canoes. He continues his long-time work as a wood turner; it includes open forms, such as everyday utility bowls as kitchen wares and bowls as functional art. The stunning closed forms he creates are both stand-alone works of art and can have a function, such as cremation urns. He plans that his own gallery will be back up and displaying by this summer. His work can also be seen online at www.svwoodworks.com.

In contrast to Viega’s works in wood, Dianne Dolan paints vibrantly colored landscapes in oil depicting grand, seemingly timeless, views of land, sea and sky, as well as still lifes of brightly colored familiar objects and flowers in interiors. She also has created 3D work in the form of artist books where she weaves her painting through the book’s accordion-pleated pages. Her work this year focuses on her landscapes and still lifes, with the beauty of the Maine environment and plein air painting inspiring her summertime work. She focuses on color in her landscapes and they have a beautiful, eternal quality due to her personal interpretation and vision inspired by specific plein air locations.

She received an art education at the Maryland Institute, with a BFA from the Hartford Art School and a Masters in Art Education from Central Connecticut State University that has allowed her to teach art, paint and show her work for the last 20 years. Her work has been exhibited at Galatea Fine Art, Boston; the Stovefactory Gallery in Charlestown, MA and she participates in juried shows at River Arts in Damariscotta and the Boothbay Regional Art Foundation. More of her work may be seen at her website, www.diannedolan.com.