Indian Island artist Michael Vermette opens his new show, “The Monhegan Paintings,” at Gleason Fine Art in Boothbay Harbor on Sept. 5. The show runs through Oct. 5, and an opening reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Sept. 6.
Michael Vermette’s personal and professional history are as intertwined with Maine as any artist’s can be. Married to a Native American, he has lived on the Penobscot Nation’s reservation on Indian Island, near Orono, for most of his adult life and was the Nation’s sole art teacher until his retirement in 2023. In addition to teaching at the Island school, over the course of his career, Vermette has held dozens of his popular painting workshops all over the state of Maine, from the Allagash in the far north to Mount Desert Island in the east, to Monhegan Island in the midcoast. His students number in the hundreds and follow him actively through his well-known newsletter.
Vermette is first and foremost a plein-air painter, that is, he paints right outdoors. Popularized by Claude Monet and the French Impressionists, plein-air painting has had enormous appeal to American painters. “Painting outdoors,” says Vermette, “is the greatest teacher because you are observing ever-changing nature and trying to capture the truth of it. It’s about getting close enough to nature that the viewer actually enters into the space of the subject through the painting” (Maine Boats, Harbors, and Homes, May 2021). In order to immerse himself in the natural world, Vermette has sought, and won, several prestigious artist residencies, including the inaugural Allagash Wilderness Waterway visiting artist program.
Vermette loves painting in oil, the medium that allows him to do what he does best- paint with gusto and exuberance, using thick brush with paint. Vermette’s oils are lush and juicy, each paint-laden brush stroke applied with a confidence that is hard to come by and rare to behold. In his stunning “Headlands, Monhegan,” Michael adds layer after layer of contrasting color to convey both the majesty and the ruggedness of Monhegan’s famous headlands. The resulting painting is nearly three-dimensional in appearance.
For “The Monhegan Paintings,” Vermette has painted a series of oils of Monhegan Island, each more powerful than the last.
Gleason Fine Art is at 31 Townsend Ave., Boothbay Harbor. Summer gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call Gleason Fine Art at 207-633-6849, email the gallery at info@gleasonfineart.com, or go to www.gleasonfineart.com.
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