Schoodic Visual Art Essay
By Maine Artists Including Summer Artists
1Cool Morning at SchoodicJanet Ledoux (1958- ), American
Oil, 2017Source: Partners in World Health, and more, edited
"Wonderful fall light," said Maine artist Janet Ledoux (1958- ), during an artist's residency at Schoodic Point, Acadia National Park, Maine. "The art of Fairfield Porter and Lois Dodd continues to resonate for me..." Born in Devil's Lake, ND in 1958, Janet was raised in Hartland, CT and graduated from the Paier College of Art in New Haven, CT in 1980. After completing a 20-year career as an award-winning Illustrator and Art Director, she began painting and exhibiting full time in 2000. A juried member of the Ogunquit Art Association, she's represented by The Barn Gallery, Ogunquit, ME, the Lupine Gallery Monhegan, Monhegan Island, ME and The Maine Art Gallery, Wiscasset, ME. The artist's website is
HERE.
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Acadia National Park 4
Robert Dorlac (1954- ), American
Watercolor on paper, 12" x 8" (w x h), 2014
Source: Acadia Residency and Artist's Website, edited
Robert Dorlac (1954- ) was the artist in residence at the July 2014 Acadia National Park Residency at Schoodic for two weeks accompanied by his wife Patricia. "I'm trying to make as honest a response to the place as I've experienced," said Dorlac, 60, professor of art at Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall, Minnesota, during an interview along the Schoodic Peninsula shore. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, earned a B.S. in Geology from the University of Missouri, and received an MFA in painting from Southern Illinois University. The artist's website is HERE.
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Surf Snow on the Ledges
Eastside Schoodic Maine
Sarah Faragher (1967- ), American
Oil on panel, 14" x 11" (w x h), 2020
Source: Artist's website bio edited
Sarah Faragher (1967- ) was born in Bar Harbor, Maine, grew up in downeast Addison, studied art history and painting at Colby College, and the University of Maine, and now lives and work as a professional painter in mid-coastal Stockton Springs, Maine. In 2015 she was an artist in residence at Acadia National Park at Schoodic Point. Her distinctive style brings forth Maine islands, and the beauty of the Maine coast in a consistently unique way. Her art has appeared in books by Carl Little. "If I had to describe my work in five words, I would say: shadowy areas surrounded by light." She's represented by Landing Gallery, Rockland, Littlefield Gallery, Winter Harbor, and George Marshall Store Gallery, York, all in Maine. The artist's website is HERE.
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Schoodic in a Strong Westerly Wind
Chenoweth Hall, (1908-1999), American
Watercolor, 21" x 15" (w x h), 1953
Bates College, Lewiston, ME
Source: Bates College, edited
Chenoweth Hall (1908-1999) was a musician, sculptor, writer, painter, and art professor. She played violin in professional groups, taught art at University of Maine, Machias, published a novel, and wrote an opera/ballet. Throughout her life, Chenoweth Hall performed with the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, Rossano String Quartet, and later in life the Brunswick Orchestra in Georgia. Her novel, The Crow in the Spruce, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1946. In the 1950s, she wrote the ballet and opera, The Stone, which was inspired by the Stone of Scone noted theft from Westminster Abbey by four students from the University of Glasgow in 1950. In 1968 Hall became an artist in residence and then a professor at the University of Maine, Machias, where she taught for ten years. When Hall moved to Maine in the early 1940s, she embraced Maine life in the coastal town, Prospect, on the Schoodic Peninsula. Bates Museum received some of her works because of her friendship with the artist Marsden Hartley, who had a love for Bates College, having been born in Lewiston. See more of her art at Bates College HERE. And more of her art at Courthouse Fine Art Gallery HERE.
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The Wave
Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), American
Oil on Masonite, 41" x 30" (w x h), 1940-41
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
Source: Schoodic as Muse, Friends of Acadia, by Carl Little, slightly edited,
In the late 1930s, painter Chenoweth Hall and her partner Miriam Colwell, from Prospect Harbor, befriended Marsden Hartley, the renowned American Modernist who was living his final years in nearby Corea. Whenever a storm was brewing on the coast, they'd pick up the painter, who didn't have a car, and drive him to Schoodic Point. He brought along no art supplies; he simply sat and watched as the waves leapt up over the rocks. Hartley ended up painting several versions of the scene, each a vision of an ocean in turmoil. This one above, the most famous, appeared in John Wilmerding's noted book, American Marine Painting, describing Hartley's wave as being "as substantial and monumental as a mountain." Meeting the aging Hartley at a reception, Fairfield Porter found him "bitter and contemptuous," but was of the opinion that "he is a real artist, who deserves better treatment from the world." Hartley's Maine paintings were based on the landscape of his home state, boiled down to a series of iconographic images of mountains and oceanfront. Hartley would have undoubtedly agreed.
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Storm Coast, Schoodic
Vincent Hartgen (1914-2002), American
Watercolor 36" x 24" (w x h), 1969
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Source: Various including
Vincent Hartgen (1914-2002), painted this in 1969, the year I graduated from the University of Maine having taken a minor in art, and while "Vinnie" was Chair of the University Art Dept., though I didn't have any of his classes and of course now I wish I had. "I thought, when you think of nature, and how many faces it has, how many angles, and variations, and subtle nuances, it's absolutely incredible. Isn't it? Ice, the crackle of ice, just the sound of ice breaking. The usual wind through grass." Hartgen was a legendary artist, teacher, curator, and collector, who founded the University of Maine's art department and museum. A passionate advocate for the arts in Maine, he committed himself to making art accessible and building the University's collection. In his 36 years as museum director, he acquired 3,900 original pieces of art. Today, with over 7,000 items, the University of Maine Museum of Art's collection is the only art collection owned by the citizens of Maine. During WWII he worked in the US Army Camouflage 603rd Engineer Battalion. Exhibitions and collections include the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design; the Smithsonian; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the Brooklyn Museum; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the De Cordova Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; and the Chase Gallery in New York, among many others. He died in 2002 in Bangor, Maine, at 88-years-old, painting until three weeks before he died. The artist's website is HERE.
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The Color of Schoodic Rocks
Colin Page (1977- ), American
Oil on canvas, 40" x 30" (w x h), circa 2022-2023
$9,000, Greenhut Galleries, Portland, ME
Source: Greenhut Galleries,
Colin Page (1977- ) was raised in Baltimore, MD and attended the Rhode Island School of Design. He graduated from Cooper Union, New York with a concentration on painting. Upon graduation he lived in New York City for three years where he was an active member in a large art community. In search of a more diverse landscape, Page moved to Maine. "Now that I've been painting this [Maine coast] landscape for over 20 years, I'm trying to develop a novel approach to painting the same basic things. I don't want to produce the same painting of a lobster boat or a set of islands over and over. Sometimes, I try to come up with a counterintuitive color idea." He also paints his two daughters in this landscape. He lives in Camden Maine where he's established the Colin Page Gallery. In 2010, I painted with a group of eight artists, including Colin, such a fine painter. The Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine, acquired his art. The artist's gallery homepage is HERE.
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Schoodic Point
John Marin (1870-1953), American
Colored pencil on paper, 14" x 11" (w x h), 1941
Christie's 2019 auction sold $5,250 USD
Source: Original, Christie's, John Marin Part I by Sheldon Reich
John Marin (1870-1953) is considered America's premier abstract watercolor painter. He painted the Maine coast, while avoiding Monhegan Island, because everyone else painted there. From 1941, the year Marin drew this sketch, to 1951, the year he died, Marin stayed with the same ratio of themes in his art. "The ocean, the countryside, the city, and the figure remained constant motifs for his increasingly abstract-lyrical paintings." This colored pencil sketch, Schoodic Point, was exhibited at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, Utah and the University Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN University of Minnesota, John Marin Drawing Retrospective, 1969-70.
