Dowling Walsh Gallery presents ‘Connie Hayes: Place as Muse’

Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland will present the exhibition “Connie Hayes: Place as Muse” from April 5 to May 25. The exhibition features a new body of work by the artist, inspired by her longtime fascination with Vinalhaven Island. The exhibition opens to the public with a reception during Rockland’s First Friday Art Walk from 4 to 7 p.m. April 5.

Widely admired for her color-rich paintings, Connie Hayes has returned to paint on Vinalhaven Island for over 25 years. “I have had a crush on Vinalhaven since 1996,” she says. “Vinalhaven’s landmarks, traditions and landscapes remain reassuringly unchanged.” 

The light, shapes, and colors of the island environment, its working waterfront, and the village populated with Mansard roof buildings are an endless source of inspiration to Hayes. “Those sights and sensations animate my memory as I paint and draw Vinalhaven back in my mainland studio,” she says. 

Included in the exhibition are luminous, large-scale oil on canvas paintings, exquisitely rendered small-scale pastel on paper works, and a group of tonally atmospheric graphite drawings.

Hayes received her MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia and Rome, her BFA from Maine College of Art in Portland, and her BA from the University of Maine. She received a fellowship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1989. Born in Gardiner, Maine, she taught and served in administration at Maine College of Art for 15 years, including as interim Dean of Faculty. In 2003, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Maine College of Art. Since 2005, she has lived and worked in Rockland, Maine. 

Hayes’s subjects range from boats and water to studies of interior and still lives. She often uses brightly colored hues, focusing on light and shadow. She depicts the landscape of Maine and the landscapes of her travels, most recently in Italy. Her work is in numerous public and private collections across the United States. It was featured in a major solo exhibition, Painting Maine: Connie Hayes and the Borrowed View, at the Farnsworth Art Museum in 2004 and has been shown at the Ogunquit Museum of Art, the Portland Museum of Art, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and the National Academy Museum, New York, among other institutions. 

“Connie Hayes: Place as Muse” is the artist’s eighth exhibition with Dowling Walsh Gallery, where she has shown since 2009.

Dowling Walsh Gallery is at 365 Main St. in Rockland. The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and by appointment on Sundays and Mondays. Visit www.dowlingwalsh.com, or call 207-596-0084 for more information.