DOWLING Pace
Stephen Pace (1918-2010), “Woman in Yellow Jacket.”

Dowling Walsh is thrilled to announce it has been selected by the Stephen and Palmina Pace Foundation as the representative of acclaimed artist Stephen Pace (1918-2010).

“Pace is an amazing artist who left a lasting legacy in his influence on younger generations of artists,” notes gallery director Jake Dowling. “We are honored to work with the Pace Foundation in introducing the breadth of his work to a wider national audience.”

Throughout his long and productive career, Pace made significant contributions to American painting as a prominent member of the New York school, known for his forceful abstract expressionist paintings and later luminous representational works and watercolors inspired in large part by his home and surroundings in Stonington.

DOWLING Pace
Stephen Pace (1918-2010), “High View Greenhead, #2.”

“We are very excited by our partnership with the Dowling Walsh Gallery. The gallery’s deep ties to Maine’s artistic legacy and commitment to painting excellence, makes it the ideal representative for the Stephen Pace estate,” states Cathy Claman, President of the Stephen and Palmina Pace Foundation.

Born in Charleston, Missouri, in 1918, Pace began his art studies at age 17 with WPA artist Robert Lahr in Evansville, Indiana. After serving in World War II, he continued his studies on the GI Bill at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he met Milton Avery, who became a lifelong friend and mentor. The two artists shared a kinship in outlook, an economy of color, line, and form, and an involvement in art as a way of life.

“As in the art of Matisse or Bonnard,” writes art historian Martica Sawin, “Pace’s subjects are drawn from the everyday — the studio, the garden, the shore — or from well-polished memories. Such subjects and the unruffled contemplations they invite are themselves a source of pleasure, but the real delight is in the Pace performance, well-rehearsed, but never rote.”

In 1953, Pace made his first trip to Maine, visiting artist Michael Loew on Monhegan Island, then traveling Downeast to the small fishing village of Stonington on Deer Isle, which became his longtime summer home. In 2007, Pace bequeathed his house and studio in Stonington to the Maine College of Art & Design as an artist residency to ensure its continued use as an artistic haven and inspiration for future generations. “It was just an incredibly influential time,” says artist Reggie Burrows Hodges of his residency in summer 2019 at the Pace House, one of many artists who had seminal experiences there.

A master draftsman and painter celebrated for his radiant use of color and agility to distill the essence of a subject in succinct and telling strokes, Stephen Pace’s work has been the subject of over eighty-five solo exhibitions at galleries and museums throughout the United States and is represented in over fifty museum collections.

An exhibition of his work will be held at Dowling Walsh in the summer of 2025. Dowling Walsh Gallery is at 365 Main St. in Rockland. Visit www.dowlingwalsh.com, or call 207-596-0084 for more information.