2024 Residents

Hannah Day

Hannah Day (b. 1997) is an artist and curator who works primarily in painting and site-specific installation. Hannah’s work draws on the nuances of her surroundings to speak to sensations of place and her memories that are tied to these landscapes. From 2015 to 2017, she attended San Francisco Art Institute where she studied environmental ethics and studio art. Day continued her education at Maine College of Art & Design where she received a Bachelor of Fine Art, with a concentration in Painting in 2020. Currently Day sustains her studio practice and co-directs gallery space 82Parris in Portland Maine.

hannahday.me 

Adrienne Kernan LaVallee  

Making art is my life’s work and oil paint is my favorite medium.  I enjoy the smell of linseed oil and the rich colors and many ways the paint can be applied to a canvas seem to be unending.  It remains wet and workable for days, everything about oil paint is deeply satisfying to me.  Primarily, I use palette knives, brushes and sometimes my gloved hands to create texture and give the painting a feeling of motion and vitality.     

My subjects are inspired  by the ever-changing colors, light, and energy of the Maine coast. These changes are the primary inspirations for my work.  My paintings present an opportunity to experience coastal living in a unique, imaginative way.  I want my expressively painted, abstracted landscape paintings to stimulate viewers’ senses and present something new or evoke special feelings or memories.  When viewers are moved by my paintings,  I have succeeded with my goals.

www.AdrienneLaVallee.com

Adele Drake

Adele Drake is a Maine landscape painter, originally from Philadelphia, PA. Since moving to Maine in 2002 she has shown extensively including at the Zillman art museum, Husson College, Lincoln Street Art Center and The Granite Gallery.  In the Summer of 2024, she was chosen for the Monhegan artist in residence. Her work is in many private collections throughout the United States. Drake describes her paintings as a way to build a relationship with nature, a relationship that will heal and rejuvenate. 

Adele Drake

2023 Residents

Ann Conrad Stewart

Landscape explored with traditional tools and with digital technology is the
starting point for my recent work. In addition to sketches and paintings,
smartphone photographs, GPS satellite mapping tools, and my computer enable
me to investigate specific locations in novel ways. Bitmap patterns emerge and
satellite technology enable specific maps to be created. Generating vibrant
pixelated patterns, computers have changed the way I look at things; however,
this modern-day reality is superseded by my experience, first and foremost, as a
painter. None of my work employs digital image making. My drive is to let the
tech inspire and my long history (as a painter and fine art printmaker) prevail.

www.annconradstewart.com

Barbara Putnam

Barbara’s prints and quilts invite us to see natural beauty at the brink: the birds, landscapes, and oceans we may soon regard with nostalgia. For two summers in the late ’90s she was the founding artist-in-residence for the Delta Wetlands and Waterfall Foundation in Canada, working in a studio alongside scientists researching avian migration and biology. That experience began a lasting interest in partnering with biologists and botanists in her work, a joint exploration of the natural world joining observation with data collection.

Barbara Putnam Prints

Heather O’Neil

I was once asked what was the one thing that made me happy. My answer was “making
things”. Making art brings joy to my life. I look at my art as a way to connect with my
loved ones. I can be inspired by old photographs, objects and stories of my family. From
that inspiration, I create a work of art that I can leave behind for someone else. The idea
of one generation inspiring another is very important to me.
As a ceramic artist, I spend a great deal of time exploring different clay bodies and
glazes. I am continually on a quest for something new to add to my work or a new way
to see it. I am extremely interested in repurposing objects that have been broken or
discarded as trash and giving them a new purpose and life as objects of beauty in art.

2022 Residents

Steve Budington

“On the residency I made drawings and paintings daily from direct observation of one the most interesting landscapes around. During the days I took visual notes while hiking Monhegan’s trail system, and in the afternoons and evenings I worked on a series of paintings in response. The magic of the island – it’s sense of time and the gift of relative solitude – encourage sustained work, reflection, and perspective; after all you can see the arc of the earth from the island’s headlands. I’ve been able to share my experience and some of the islands’ art history with my students at the University of Vermont where I teach painting and drawing. I continue to make work in response to my explorations there, and this fall I’m launching a landscape-based studio course I began developing at the residency.”

I make work in and about the landscape. Maritime signal flags in recent paintings of mine indicate messages like “man overboard,” “call shore,” or “I am trying to communicate with you.” These flags, resembling twentieth-century abstractions in primary colors, were used to communicate emergency, uncertainty at sea, or navigational intention. Like wind maps, elevation charts, and other informational signage, they suggest ongoing or predictive experiences in the landscape.

stevebudington.com

Amanda Case Millis

“The Monhegan Residency was a much-needed opportunity to reflect and lean into my painting on my own. The time and magical surroundings of the island allowed me to go in directions I hadn’t anticipated. I found subject matter that felt more personal. I expected to be completely drawn to the dramatic coastline, but the fallen trees and root structures of the woods inspired me. I am thankful for having the time on Monhegan and know I will continue to investigate what I discovered on the island for a long time to come.”

In our fast-paced and screen-mediated contemporary climate, my paintings bring attention to the moment. I examine the everyday and the often overlooked.
 
I am in love with looking and responding – and am fascinated by the process of understanding my surroundings and myself through painting. As I work, I search for specific color relationships and geometries. I synthesize the transitory impressions of light and color in nature and record my emotional response. For me, painting is a responsive and mindful act where the aim is not to copy the world but to find a new reality in each painting. In our era of constant distraction, I slow down, look deeply and integrate my physical observations with my interior feelings.

amandacasemillis.com

Justine Lasdin Springer

My creative process is driven by those moments of awe, where color, texture, and line play together in a harmonious way. My work explores the scenes of Maine and how looking deeply brings out the colors, shapes, and lines we might not see if we just pass by. I want my work to express that feeling of paused time and capture the abundance of nature that surrounds us.

justinelasdin.com

2021 Residents

James Parker Foley

A woman in a painting is a figure.

I have a note-to-self from a few months after I began making figurative paintings, which reads, what if they had purses? Once the women in my paintings had purses, they had careers. People with careers aren’t figures.

I gave them boats—so that they could escape their careers, and I gave them binoculars to go birding, so they’d have a hobby. Clad in crop tops, they set loose, rampaging around the landscape. They smacked one another with their purses, let each other dangle from cliffs, and strangled any man who came onto them. And, at the end of the day, they simply piled into their dories and set out. Their lives were full of all the things human lives are full of.

I began to expand their world, which is a sort of utopian version of my own home in Maine. It is an otherworld which lies slightly beyond ours—not a world without struggle or tragedy—rather, a world in which the governing forces are slightly altered. Within this world, there are scenic attractions: cliffs, seascapes, trees—but also traffic cones to control who goes where, and the secret service to preside over important events. Now all my paintings—even those without women—are set in the otherworld, the world that the purse ladies built.

"This residency would have been magical under normal circumstances but was all the more vital personally and artistically during the stresses of social isolation due to the global pandemic.

The opportunity to explore, let my mind wander for the joy of letting my mind wander, to attempt and fail at making constructed photographs, to sketch preposterous drawings and to be truly present was like a tonic.

Also, if you time it right, you can watch the sunset over Manana Island while swimming in the harbor and then run to the lighthouse to watch the sun set a second time."

jamesparkerfoley.com

Candice Gosta

Candice Gosta was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. Gosta is a recent graduate of Maine College of Art‘s painting program. During their time in Portland, they partnered with numerous local organizations, including non-profit contemporary arts venue SPACE. Gosta’s work has been included in several group exhibitions at Maine College of Art, SPACE, the Portland Public Library, and most recently, the “Let Equality Shine” mural located at 50 Monument Sq, Portland, ME.

Gosta’s work is heavily influenced by their Afro-Boricua upbringing in New Haven, Connecticut. They use bright and bold colors coupled with both found objects and repurposed materials, to create large-scale paintings, prints, and installations. Gosta’s work relies on the tactility of material to activate their viewers' senses and evoke an emotional response. Gosta’s identity as a Black Latino has inspired them to use their work as a mode of documentation — they describe their work as a diary of complex emotional trauma, memories of childhood and domesticity, and exploration of the gender binary.

gostastudios.com

2020 Residents

Adam Eckberg

"This residency would have been magical under normal circumstances but was all the more vital personally and artistically during the stresses of social isolation due to the global pandemic.

The opportunity to explore, let my mind wander for the joy of letting my mind wander, to attempt and fail at making constructed photographs, to sketch preposterous drawings and to be truly present was like a tonic.

Also, if you time it right, you can watch the sunset over Manana Island while swimming in the harbor and then run to the lighthouse to watch the sun set a second time."

adamekberg.com

Jody Dube

Maine K-12 teacher residency

"The residency was a very rare opportunity to step aside from all the things that distract to focus purely on my thoughts and my work. The setting, with its beauty and storied history as a destination for so many artists, provided me with all the peace and inspiration needed to refocus and center myself. It has been as much a spiritual retreat as an artist residency. It’s spurred so much new work, it will occupy much of the next year for me and beyond."

“My time on Monhegan was as much a spiritual retreat as an artist residency. It afforded me time… time away from all the cares, pressures, and distractions that tend to clutter the mind and make it difficult to gather ones thoughts properly in the cause of making art. I had a rare opportunity to step aside from time itself and experience genuine immersion into a creative mindset. I’d been moving with clear intention toward two-dimensional work since springtime and the isolation of COVID-19, preparing for the residency by establishing a drawing practice. The physical beauty of Monhegan’s rocky shores and the majesty of Cathedral Woods profoundly inspired me. The freedom of my island life allowed me to delve deeper and explore ideas more than I ever could amidst the distractions of my routines back at home. The Monhegan Artist Residency board thoughtfully addressed challenges brought on by the pandemic and I was provided with excellent accommodations and careful planning for my physical safety, for which I am deeply appreciative. I began several pieces on the island that will be completed over the next several months. The experience will remain with me for a lifetime.”

Jody’s Facebook page

2019 Residents

Dozier beLL

"I’ve had many other residencies in the course of my career, but none have afforded me the kind of unpressured, uninterrupted flow of thought and work that this one did. The other residencies were valuable in terms of encouraging me and expanding my vision as a younger artist; with this one, I was able to consider the work I’ve done over the past 30 years, why I’d been doing it, how that might change, and what kind of inputs are needed at this point. That kind of time simply isn’t available in the lives of most older artists I know, who tend to be subject to obligations and pressures that aren’t present in earlier phases of one’s career. It was invaluable at this point in my life.”

dozierbell.com

Jennifer Calivas

“By being given the time and space to work without other responsibilities I was afforded the chance to let my intuition and ideas ferment and develop at a natural pace. I had time to make “failed” attempts and learn from them and try the next thing, eventually finding a path into a new body of work. My work ended up being influenced by the woods and ocean, the house I was staying in, and the people I met.”

jennifercalivas.com

Kate Cargile

Kate Cargile is a middle school art teacher who is highly interested in literature, history and visual culture studies. Working in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, appliqué quilting, and paper-mache sculpture; her subject matter ranges from the beauty of the people, objects and places that make up my everyday life to fanciful ideas from myths, legends, tales and her own imagination

“I came back from the residency full of ideas and raw material for this upcoming year’s art production. It was an invaluable time to invent, experiment, process, and focus on my art. I gained a tremendous amount of perspective and knowledge by being exposed to the art history and culture of Monhegan. The opportunity to really study the natural environment of the island will have an impact on my painting for years to come.”

Kate Cargile on Instagram

2018 Residents

Jude Valentine

A long time resident of Maine, Jude completed her BFA at the Maine College of Art and MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has received numerous grants and awards for her work including a Jerome Foundation Fellowship and an Individual Grant Award from the Council of Creative Arts, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

“The residency on Monhegan was a very meaningful experience. The setting and pace of Monhegan was so helpful to allow access to my interior world. I am so grateful for the time there. I feel it is a miracle that this program exists—that Monhegan Island as an artist retreat exists.”

judevalentine.com

Sarah Haskell

Sarah Haskell is an award-winning artist/educator who has been weaving and teaching for over forty years. Since her graduation from Rhode Island School of Design in 1976, she has traveled as far away as Japan to learn and teach about her love of weaving. Sarah balances her work as a community artist with her career as a studio artist.  Sarah regularly exhibits her work in local and regional galleries, universities and art shows.

“…With this generous chunk of time I was able to connect with the subtle energy and beauty of the island. Just like the erosion of physical objects requires time and the repetitive motion of weather - my creative heart and mind needed the duration of weeks and an intimate connection to the natural world to shift.”

sarahhaskell.com

Raegan Russell

Raegan Russell is an art educator and artist, who works in oil, mixed media and printmaking. Her current body of work is figurative, painterly and evocative of the light and space found in the neighborhoods and changing landscape of rural Maine, and in her travels. Her paintings, while sensitive and observational in nature, look for the quirky, unusual or profound lying just beneath the surface of the mundane.
She is a graduate of Boston University’s School for the Arts where she earned both her BFA and MFA.

“I felt embraced by the community, painted with local plein air painters, met artists and was invited to drawing sessions and open studios. I know that I will come back to Monhegan again and again - as a painter and as a part of the community.”

raeganrussell.com

2017 Residents

Meg Hahn

I am interested in creating disruption in the repetition and uniformity of pattern, particularly with the grid. Color is used as material, where the weight and gravity of its physical substance dictates the form it encounters. Ultimately, my work is a reflection of my curiosities in formal experimentation and observations of living in a material landscape.

meghahn.com

Cory Bucknam

As an art teacher living on the coast of Maine, I am constantly inspired by the natural world - not only by what is visible to the naked eye, but also by what lies beneath the surface.  Cellular structures are as beautiful as seashells, patterns seen through a microscope are as inspiring as the patterns made by waves at the shore.

stroudwaterstudio.com

Maia Snow

My paintings are a self-referential visual language that speak to the extremities of the human experience and the intangibility of thoughts and emotions. They take the form of painted vessels—a holding pen for ephemeral wanderings, incapable of containing themselves. With a fierce attention to surface, I work to uncover the connection between ambiguity of thought and lived experience.

maiasnow.com

2016 Residents

KrisAnne Baker

The residency totally met my expectations. I was completely inspired by the varying atmospheres, sometimes clear, sometimes foggy. The clarity of the water and my underwater viewings were stimulating, mesmerizing, and what I had hoped for.

krisannebaker.com

Michelle Hauser

On Monhegan, I began by developing a group of paintings derived from my daily and nightly experiences of exploring, hiking, and observing the ocean while sketching and drawing. At night I often found my way down to Lobster Cove to study the unsullied night sky illuminated by stars.

michelle-hauser.com

Barbara Sullivan

Monhegan is a special place. I loved being where many of my favorite painters had been before me, to experience the island at a different time but yet imbued with so much history and independence and to see the mechanical workings of Monhegan in the present. For example how re-cycling is handled and the power plant, how the library is run, all these things made an impact on me. I often heard painters speak of “the light” and I ended up making work about the light literally, before there was power, about the oil lamps, and then also about the refracted light of cameras and the magnified light of binoculars. I was drawn to make work, objects about “the light” — site specific to Monhegan as a place.

caldbeck.com

2015 Residents

Coreena Affleck

I enjoy creating forms that have a resonance of nature, yet harbor some uncertainty about exactly where in nature they occur. I am passionate about clay as a material for the endless possibilities it yields. The other materials I use in conjunction are either found outside, typically from animals or trees, or something that has been processed by man, be it wood, plastic, or metal. I find myself being most inspired by simply being outside and mentally bringing back what I see to the studio. I am curious about the natural systems of repetition that occur in our lives and in our natural environment, and continue to actively investigate them.

coreenaaffleck.com

Nathaniel Meyer

The residency provided me with an opportunity to focus solely on my work- no distractions at all. Heading out painting every day allowed me to get into a rhythm that would be difficult to achieve with all the other distractions of daily life- living a hermetic existence for a while helped me live the work.

nathaniel-meyer.com

Justin Richel

The MARC fellowship is a gift which will continue to inspire me indefinitely, the impact of which I have not yet come to understand completely. Like all good transformational experiences, they reveal themselves slowly over time. The residency afforded me the time and space to rest, reflect and regroup in a bucolic environment amongst a supportive and creative community. It became very clear to me how special Monhegan is, as each person I encountered shared a deep love and connection to the island. A connection I now share with them.

justinrichel.com

2014 Residents

Scott Minzy

Ever since I stole my fathers copy of Moby Dick, not to read it but to obsess over the illustrations, I have been fascinated by the legend of Rockwell Kent. A biography of Kent describes his prints in the following way:

“Many of the prints seem to depict humanity in a struggle to capture ultimate reality, to penetrate into the mystery of the dark night of the universe, and to discover the reasons for existence. Over the Ultimate is a tragic but, at the same time, heroic conception.”

scottminzy.com

Victoria Statsenko

I harness the power of perception as both tool and subject. By selectively painting on digitally printed textiles, I am able to generate an immediate and immersive optical experience. Linear geometric form is the foundation to my image making, providing a structured surface for the eye to freely roam without an opportunity to settle.

victoriastatsenko.com

Jan ter Weele

I have always painted a lot, 5 or 6 days a week, but my hours have been inconsistent. During my residency I followed a fairly strict schedule which I have now carried over into my daily practice, getting started early and going into the early afternoon. As for my painting, color has become increasingly important to me. I’m also simplifying more to make paintings that are primitive and powerful, a direction I intend to pursue.

janterweele.com

2013 Residents

Daniel Anselmi

Anselmi’s work combines the use of collage and paint to explore the relationship between imagery and abstraction. He uses paper and other materials “to elicit ‘brushstrokes’ on the canvas.” In 2013, his work was included in the I-95 Triennial at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor, and the Betts Gallery in Belfast.

danielanselmi.com

Melinda Campbell

The first teacher-artist in the Monhegan Artists’ Residency Program, Campbell is a K-6 Art Specialist in the Auburn School Department. Her work was featured in a solo exhibition at The Barn Gallery in Phippsburg, Me., in 2013 and in numerous group exhibitions over the past five years, including Saco Bay Artists in Biddeford and Northlight Gallery in Millinocket. For more information on her Monhegan experience, see her blog.

melindacampbell.net

Kristin Fitzpatrick

A recent graduate of the Maine College of Art, Fitzpatrick is printmaker who works in a variety of media. She has participated in various public art projects over the past 5 years and shown her work at the Landing Gallery in Rockland.

kristinmariafitzpatrick.com

2012 Residents

Kenny Cole

A 1981 graduate of Pratt Institute, Cole has shown his work at a number of venues throughout the state, among them, the University of Maine Museum of Art, Space Gallery, and the Belfast Free Library. His imagery often makes reference to social, religious, and political issues.

“In the spring of 2012 I spent 5 weeks as the Artist in Residence on Monhegan Island, Maine. Prior to this I had been involved with a group of artists, organizing various political art actions, from which, I had learned how to create silk-screen prints using water based acrylic inks squeezed through very simple newsprint stencils. So for my residency I decided to try and teach myself more about this medium and to create some prints in line with my own painting and drawing. I created 27 different editions of around 12 or so prints, per edition, washing out/destroying each stencil after printing. I also created stencils using drawing fluid and screen filler, which was a bit more of a process than newsprint stencils, but afforded a nice fluid contrast to cut paper.

“Monhegan Island is truly a magically romantic place, with cliffs, crashing waves, fish shacks and walls of stacked lobster traps. There is a long tradition of artists who have sought out the rugged beauty and solitude of this place to create art, including Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent and George Bellows, just to name a few. My experiences and impressions were intensely mixed. Amazingly enough, everything these artists saw then; the light, landscape and community of lobster persons, are all still there, yet the ills of our modern world have not left Monhegan unscathed. Plastic is everywhere, not surprising, considering that the island’s fishing industry requires a material that can stand up to moisture, loading and hauling, to which lesser materials like wood and steel would invariably degrade by breaking, rotting and rusting. And, as is the same every place, that is by the sea, stuff washes up. So I found myself transfixed on the things that the boatloads of plein air painters, who descend upon Monhegan each spring, choose not to contemplate or capture, finding instead contrast and contradiction as my subject matter. Each print reflects something of my Monhegan experience during the spring of 2012 and here you will find everything I allowed my encounters and instincts to capture and reveal, from the minke whales and night heron to the guy with the ‘sword’ pierced earring and the ‘I Love Bacon’ bumper sticker. My hope is that I have created a compelling portrayal of a place that is in fact, still truly compelling.”

kennycole.com

Emily Leonard Trenholm

Trenholm earned a BFA from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA from Boston University where she studied with John Walker. She responds to the natural world in an abstract and painterly fashion. She plans to paint on location while on Monhegan and also hopes to make watercolors and reduction block prints.

Emily Trenholm was a featured artist in the 2015 University of Maine Museum of Art exhibition, Monhegan: A New Perspective that included work from her Monhegan Residency.

emilyleonardtrenholm.blogspot.com/

2011 Residents

Alina Gallo

Among recent MARC fellows, Alina Gallo has the done the most to share her Monhegan experiences over the Internet, maintaining a blog throughout her residency. Her website juxtaposes paintings and photographs made on the island in June of 2011, along with her written descriptions of the people she encountered, ranging from local residents, to members of the long-standing artist community and the active group of birders, who regularly populate the island during migration season. Shortly after returning to Portland where she lives, Gallo had a one-person show of her Monhegan paintings at The Heart Opening Studio. In addition to her Monhegan residency, Gallo received a MacDowell Fellowship in 2010.

alinagallo.com

Gail Hollenbeck

A resident of Bailey Island, Maine, Gail Hollenbeck had made several trips to Monhegan before she received a MARC fellowship. In her application, Hollenbeck noted: “My visits in the past to Monhegan, though short, have been exhilarating. During a Monhegan residency, I would expect to do a series of evocative, spatial rock drawings and small oil paintings, and be receptive to new ideas that come when working quietly in proximity to nature.” Like several other MARC fellows, she has also had other residencies in this country and abroad—at Yaddo, the Ballinglen fellowship in Ireland, and the Maryland Institute’s program at Rochefort-en-Terre in Brittany, France. She received her B.A. in painting from American University, an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute, and studied at the Skowhegan Summer School of Painting and Sculpture.

Writing about her work, the artist notes the influence of abstract expressionists Arshile Gorky and Franz Kline and draws attention to an “unsettling tension [that] exists between colliding forms—where evocative shapes emerge and dissolve…. From the vantage point of a fast moving boat, I have filled sketchbooks with images of ledge and islands soaring through the vast expanse of open sea.”

2010 Resident

Christopher Keister

Keister’s geometric abstractions have been included in both Maine biennial exhibitions, at the Portland Museum of Art in 2003 and 2007 and at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in 2008; and the Portland Museum acquired two works for their permanent collection in 2010. Aside from his painting practice, Keister is currently studying book binding and dowsing; and he is assembling an occult reading room on Peaks Island in Casco Bay where he lives.

2009 Resident

Daniel Corey

I am a traditional painter rooted in the aesthetic values of the Ashcan School and the impressionists of the Cape Cod School of Art. Mostly inspired by light quality, color harmony and abstract shapes, my paintings are created from direct observation. I really enjoy the challenge of painting nontraditional views/subjects and finding the beauty in them, along with the views that make Maine, Maine.

What I hope to accomplish during my residency on Monhegan is most simply stated as growth. I believe the time and surroundings provided through this residency will allow me to really focus on what makes my paintings mine and what makes me, me. Being familiar with the rich art history of the island and the part some of my personal painting heroes have had in it, would make this residency very special to me. I find this a priceless opportunity to experience the scenes they painted and walk in their footsteps, while having the time to paint my own personal view of the island and hopefully leaving a few footprints of my own. Keeping track of this experience through a daily journal is another task I have set for myself if selected, and will make a full copy available to the Monhegan Residency Corporation to share as they wish.

danielcorey.blogspot.com

2008 Resident

2007 Residents

Mercedes Gilbert

Mercedes Gilbert received a Monhegan residency fellowship shortly after she finished the certificate program in photography at the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport. Since then she has gone on to exhibit her work at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and at Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, Maine. She has also worked with digital photographer John Paul Caponigro at his studio in nearby Cushing. More recently she has turned her efforts toward painting. When she showed her recent work in the MARC@20 exhibition, she wrote about the transition from one medium to another:

“I have always been a bit envious of the way painters see the world. Where I might see only a white house or a green tree, a painter may see a multitude of colors and subtleties in tone. Shortly after moving to San Francisco, I decided to explore this way of creating. As challenging as it can be at times, I’m thrilled by the tactile experience of mixing creamy pigments and putting them to canvas. I continue to photograph, but for now I find myself hopelessly drawn to painting as a way of interpreting the visual world.”

mercedesgilbertpaintings.com

Ryan Wight

Shortly after graduating from the University of Southern Maine with a B.F.A., Wight received a Monhegan Residency Fellowship. He contributed work to the MARC@20 exhibition in 2010, noting that in his recent work:

“I want to give attention to natural structures and show how they work together to construct a system of functions. I work to develop my artistic language of symbols and form through studies and conceptual thoughts dealing with organic matter. My marks are about connecting physically to a work through repetition and natural gesture motions. The buildup of paint and other materials is a tool I use to create a representation of living dimensional space. Concepts such as gravity, direction, and lineage are important attributes.”

He lives in Gorham, Maine.

2006 Residents

Cynthia Davis

Cynthia Davis, currently resides in Harpswell, Maine. She holds a MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth in Fibers, and a BFA in Printmaking from the Portland School of Art now know as the Maine College of Art. Her advanced studies in art include attendance at University of Southern Maine, University of Colorado, Boulder, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Studio Art Centers International, Florence, Italy.

cynthiacdavis.com

Nicole Duennebier

In the 16th century there was a group of painters called Carravagists who, inspired by Caravaggio’s technique, applied the painter’s deep shadow to a new level in their still-life paintings of luxury objects. Before long the obsession with darkness lead their paintings to appear to be nothing more then a void impregnated with pin-pricks of light. In these paintings “objects only exist to the extent that they can be perceived, but in order to be perceived they need light to dispel that darkness which is the original state of the world” (Norbert Schneider, Still Life, 1999).

The “original state of darkness” can be considered in relation to one human conception of nature, which is marked by confusion and anxiety. Dark woods and undersea regions best exemplify this idea. In these places, light is a foreign object brought along by the observer so they can be aware of the complex animal/plant operations at work in the darkness. In the dark we are disconnected from nature by our dull senses, which make the system of nature just beyond our perception.

“My work deals with mass growing out of darkness. These masses are made of organic and man-made materials fused together to form grotesque bodies. Delicate fabric and cakes of mold become one and the same, neither more beautiful then the other. These rotten bodies attract the attention of animals and insects, which are eventually incorporated into the form themselves.”

nicoleduennebier.com

2005 Residents

 David Higgins

[At Monhegan] I discovered a vibrant artist colony with many artists at work in studios and outdoor locations across the island. They were more than willing to discuss art in general, their own art, my art – all with candor and excitement. I was able to watch artists at work painting the island landscape in a multitude of styles, techniques and interpretations and soon realized these ideas were readily adaptable to digital imaging. It was very energizing. My interest in painting, something I had not pursued since my school days, was rekindled. I began to paint in earnest and now find that I approach a subject first by deciding whether to render it digitally or in paint.

Much of what I learned as a photographer is readily applicable to painting particularly in regard to composition. This is where I began my study of painting, and I think my photographer’s eye is the hallmark of my painterly style. I have spent a lot of time working with tone in the darkroom. This is why I find painting so refreshing as it has allowed me the freedom to really play with color and to mix and layer colors to create light, shadow and shape. I spend a great deal of time now studying color theories and putting them into practice. Everyday is full of choices.

d-higgins.com

Terry Hilt

Born in Bar Harbor, in 1953, Terry Havey Hilt is a native of Maine with many generations of ancestors on both sides immigrating and settling in Hancock County. She is a graduate of University of Maine at Orono and Boston University; and received her PhD from University of Maryland School of Social Work. She is a psychotherapist as well as artist and published poet.

“I am captivated by constant motion and force of the landscape—the physics of gravity, velocity, and electricity as these create continual movement within the sea, fields, sky. In the studio I paint the kinesthetic memories of these shifting elements in an abstracted “all at once” energized landscape.”

2004 Residents

Sasha White

Sasha White studied art at Bowdoin College in Maine and Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, before serving as a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the Maine College of Art. A print maker, who specializes in “low-tech” approaches to the medium, White has also taught printmaking in Venice, Italy. Her graphic work on Monhegan related to a drawing project where she explored “things that move through the air: birds, insects, seeds. Composition, material choice, and the quality of the mark respond to how and where I find these ‘movers.’” She exhibited her work in both the Carina House exhibition in 2006 and the MARC@20 exhibition, held to inaugurate the new residency studio space. For the latter show, White recollected that her island residency:

“. . . shifted how I work, drawing much more in the field, spending time waiting and watching and allowing my “subjects” to unfold themselves into my work. In the longer term, it has challenged me to redefine my sense of audience and community; asking me for whom I make art and what my responsibilities as an artist are. It has, at times, led me away from art into the practice of yoga and bodywork, the study of plants and birds, the growing of food and the making of medicine.”

Robert Pollien

Rob earned his M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania under the noted Maine landscape painter Neil Welliver and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. A former Artist in Residence at Acadia National Park, Rob was awarded a Maine Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship in painting and has been a Carina House Resident on Monhegan Island. His work is included in Art of the Maine Islands by Arnold Skolnick and Carl Little. Pollien’s paintings are in numerous corporate, public and private collections. Rob is represented by the Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, Maine.

pollien.com

2003 Residents

Susan Bennett

Susan Bennett is a University of Southern Maine graduate. Her work has been included in juried shows in New York, Santa Fe, Boston, and Rockport, Maine. In 2009 she exhibited her work at USM in Portland and with the New England Sculptors in Boston.

“Placed in frames, the landscape is viewed as an object, a substitute for the viewer’s perception of reality. Totemic and ritual symbols of non-human spirits, dreams, and myths have in time, been weeded out of our consciousness. We are fortunate to encounter remnants of these instinctive and intuitive experiences.

On an early evening a few days before my Monhegan residency ended, I walked to Lobster Cove. It was a beautiful evening with the sun shining through a warm moist wind. I found a seat on the rocks a short distance from the ocean swells just beyond me. I mixed up a batch of paint and water that looked and felt like mud. I painted on paper, placing the sheets of paper over the rocks to dry. While the paint was drying, the sun was touching the edge of the water, turning red, edging the clouds with purple. I washed my feet and hands with the leftover water from my jug and knew in that moment, I would hold this memory forever.”

susanbennettsculpture.com

Michael Branca

“In five weeks as the ridiculously lucky Artist-in-Residence at the Carina House on Monhegan Island, Maine, I completed my first eighteen oil landscapes. I took on the challenge of working outside as a way of improving my skills as a painter. I thought I’d enjoy the process, but I did not expect to fall in love with it the way I did. I understand now the compulsive drive that leads a person to spend a lifetime painting the landscape. Whole days spent rooted in a beautiful spot, trying to keep up with nature. Chasing the light, racing the tides, fighting the fog. I can’t imagine ever getting it completely right, but I’m sure I’m not done trying.”

mikebranca.com

2002 Residents

Kelli LK Haines

Kelli LK Haines works primarily with 4×5 format photography, using a 1952 Crown Graflex with slow-speed black and white film. Straight photography can best describe her style. Preferring to do the majority of her work in-camera results in strong negatives, allowing for more creativity in the darkroom. While the main focus of her work is architectural landscape, she is also known for her intensive portraiture. Also a talented painter, Haines has developed a unique style of painted photographs.

A lifelong student of photography, she also had as a mentor, noted photographer Todd Webb. She was awarded grants by the State of Maine to study at the Maine Photographic Workshops and has exhibited throughout New England and the Southeast. Haines was formerly a teacher of photography at CPAC of UMA in Lewiston, ME. In Maine, she is represented by the Lupine Gallery on Monhegan and the Galeyrie in Falmouth.

Carol Sloane

I have come to realize that “path following” is a compelling and provocative process for me. The passage of time, the filtering of light and shadows, the meditations that percolate through my mind when I walk have all become parts of my personal documentation.

I walk often, in all kinds of weather and in all kinds of places. I have built an extended series of works, including three 25′, scrolls with oil sticks on paper, tracking my perambulations. I want my work to convey the joys and insights that I internalize when I walk, my paths and experiences to be anybody’s roads.

I paint in oil on canvas and I work in oil sticks on panel or on 140 lb watercolor paper. I work from photographs and from life.

carolsloanemaine.com

2001 Residents

John Knight

My current paintings are centered around common plants and their environments. They also describe a dialogue between the sky and the earth. As the plants send out flowers and shoots, growing higher, they become the go-between connecting the earth and sky, and the plants themselves intermingle with their surroundings. I have let these often small weeds become monumental in my paintings, running the whole vertical length of my canvases, uniting solid ground below with atmosphere above. I have encountered these plants in fields, beaches or rocky shores here in Southern Maine. On an aesthetic level, I notice the color and shape of radiating petals on a flower with a specific number and formation, but observing the whole plant closely and identifying it through books opens up other meanings relating to its use as food, medicine, or textile/building material. I welcome the diversity of tenacious weeds that grow without conscious planting or landscaping. Their surprises contrast with gridded plots of daffodils or tulips, and the vast, uniform orchards or crop fields that fill abundant but homogenous produce bins in supermarkets across the country.

In my studio, forms of clouds, stones, plants, rolls of hay, or bodies of both land and water are malleable and change to fit my compositions. However, the subjects and their environments that I create are always informed by my sense of the different places I have lived or spent time. A century plant I painted in New Mexico relates to a sow-thistle I see and paint in Maine. A tower of limestone blocks I painted in a quarry in Indiana relates to natural rock formations I saw and painted in New Mexico and to the shape of the rocky coast of Southern Maine. The name and identity of the forms change, but certain shapes and compositions repeat through many of my paintings. In the studio I work to generate the sense of scale I experienced standing with my easel planted in a large outdoor space with the ground sweeping up under my feet and clouds rushing overhead. I get back to experiences I have had walking out into certain outdoor spaces and being struck by a feeling of harmony in the forms surrounding me.

johnardenknight.com

Betsy McLellan

I am a full-time artist living and working in Coastal Maine. Originally from the Boston area, I received a BFA in Painting with a minor in Art History from Boston University. After moving to Maine in 2000, I had the great honor of being awarded a Monhegan Carina House Residency in the summer of 2001. I primarily work in oil and am drawn to Maine’s landscape and quaint harbors. Current projects include poster illustrations and children’s book illustrations. My inspirations include Lynne Drexler, Dahlov Ipcar, Fairfield Porter, Edward Hopper, Henri Matisse, Richard Deibenkorn, Willem de Kooning and Wayne Thiebaud.

betsymclellan.com

2000 Residents

Mary B. Harrington

marybharrington.com

Lynn Travis

A direct response to my environment is central to both my landscape and figure painting. Long walks, extended close observation, and daily life experiences give rise to my subject matter.

lynntravis.com

1999 Residents

Michael E. Vermette

A strong attachment to the art of an earlier Monhegan artist, James Fitzgerald (1899-1971) first drew Michael Vermette to the island.

“My residency on Monhegan became a time of deep spiritual connection to the painter in me. In the years leading up to the residency I became a close friend with Ann Hubert, the sole heir of the James Fitzgerald estate…The idea of the residency was to field test what Ann and I believed to be Fitzgerald’s methods of painting and work ethic . . . The residency was a divine life-changing appointment. I came to Monhegan Island as an artist-teacher, but left a painter, and that will stay with me all of my life.”

A 1980 graduate of the Portland School of Art (now the Maine College of Art), Vermette was the first art teacher at the Indian Island School on the Penobscot Reservation and he has taught workshops through MECA at the Katahdin Lake Wilderness Camps in Millinocket.

michaelevermette.com

Michael J. Smith

1998 Residents

David Little

Maine artist David Little was born in New York and studied at the Skowhegan School and also with William Kienbusch. He has exhibited widely in Maine and New York and now resides and paints in Portland, Maine. David’s work has appeared in a number of publications including Art of the Maine Coast and Paintings of New England.

Martha Mickles

I believe that the act of making interesting photographs is one part mechanical, one part spatial, one part the elements of design, and one part how the photographer views the subject at that particular moment. I aspire to honesty in my work, add a bit of humor or irony, a dash of my mood, and some of who I am. Beyond this I believe it best to leave “interpretation” to my viewers . . .
marthamickles.com

1997 Residents

MaJo Keleshian

The Carina residency was a gift of time—five weeks to explore the island and to work. With box loads of art supplies and books, I stepped off the ferry and into a lovely studio where, with no distractions and no expectations, I began a series of small paintings on paper. The “Mnemonics” broke new ground for me and I’m ever grateful for my time on Monhegan.

umaine.edu/art/faculty/keleshian/

On the art faculty at the University of Maine, Augusta, Karen Adrienne is a printmaker and a member of an artists collaborative called the ArtDogs, based in Gardiner, Maine. She participated in the state-wide Maine Print Project in 2006 and has recently shown her work at Whitney Art Works in Portland. She has received several grants since her Monhegan residency including a Good Idea Grant from the Maine Arts Commission in 2007, and artist residencies in Spain (2001) and Germany (2002). In the Carina House exhibition catalogue, Adrienne described how her Monhegan residency came at a critical point in her career as she was preparing for a complex, multimedia installation piece for a Boston gallery:

“The residency gave me the much needed time and focus to record the dominant sound component for the work [Room of Forgiveness]. I circumnavigated the island and recorded the many complex sounds the water made as it hit the shore. This was the underlying current in the multi-layered sound track used for the installation. The recordings filled my mornings and evenings, while drawings filled the afternoons, What bliss!”

See her Facebook gallery
 

1996 Residents

Margaret Leonard

mfleonardsart.webs.com

Phil Poirier

I suppose I have always felt that if an artist has to talk about his work, he’s not doing his job. That said… 

In the past I have somewhat jokingly referred to my work as neo-luminism. Recently I have been revisting that term. I would like to make it stick.

Luminism in the 19th century had at its core the idea of the landscape imbued with light; the spiritual. It often made an attempt to place man within the landscape, sometimes in a self conscious and ham-fisted way (for example, with a couple tiny figures sitting in the corner of a a spectacular scene, smoking a pipe). Much of my work eschews spectacular scenery. It doesn’t make constant reference to man and his works. It is about finding the spiritual in the distillation of simple, unspectacular scenes. Put simply: what you see and feel here is what you get. And if what you get is a yearning for a deeper connection with nature and spirit, then you share with me the thing that keeps me painting.

philpoirier.weebly.com

1995 Residents

Joe Kievitt

Joe Kievitt was born and raised on the coast of Maine where drawing from the landscape was a significant part of his life. Living in San Francisco and New York, Joe discovered his affection for abstract art. He currently lives and works in Portland, Maine. Joe is represented by Miller Block Gallery in Boston and Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque and has exhibited works throughout the U.S. He has also completed numerous public art projects in Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. When not making art, Joe works as a wood worker and carpenter. In the fall of 2010, Joe attended the Anderson Ranch Residency Program.

joekievitt.com

Martha Miller

I am an artist who lives in Portland and Woolwich, Maine: my apartment and studio are in Portland where I work during the week, and I go home to my house in the woods of Woolwich for the weekends. It’s a great balance!

In making a portrait, I attempt to reveal something of the psychological and emotional depth of the individual, but also something more archetypal — what it means to be human — to have a past, passions, and a spirit.

Using bits of the surrounding room to set a stage, the resulting work is influenced by many layers of stimuli including such factors as mood, conversation, images on the studio wall and music, as well as images from memories and dreams. I use all these scattered and changing sources much like a novelist to pull together a story on the page.

My self-portraits are born of this same process, and are part of an on-going spiritual and emotional diary.

marthamiller.com

1994 Residents

Monique Silverman

Monique Silverman completed her M.F.A. in photography and integrated media at the California Institute of Arts in 1998 and now lives in Vancouver, Canada, where she is an artist, educator, and counselor. Her photographic practice addresses identity in the context of place. Writing about her earlier experience on Monhegan, she notes:

“When I fantasize about creating the perfect situation in which to make art, I remember my time on Monhegan and yearn to reproduce it. The solitude, the time, and the quiet allowed me the opportunity to solidify my own creative process. My work was altered by my time on the island, as I was challenged to think about what it means to make pictures in the landscape.”

Nathaniel Udell

Nathaniel Udell began making photographs while studying Music History at the University of Vermont. Upon graduation he moved to Maine and enrolled in the Resident Program at the Maine Photographic Workshops, where he later worked as a teaching assistant and lab manager.

Today, Udell lives in Seattle where he continues to pursue photography, as well as drawing and print making. He currently works for Benham Studio Gallery in Seattle and intends to begin graduate studies in the Fall of 1998. His work has been exhibited at Maine Coast Artists in Rockport, and at locations in Vermont and Seattle. His work appears in the permanent collection of the Farnsworth Museum and in several private collections throughout the East Coast.

1993 Residents

Eileen Gillespie

Eileen Gillespie’s work deals with structure and light found in architectural and natural surroundings. Her drawings and paintings focus on pattern, geometry, and composition nurturing a long fascination with the abstract qualities of natural and man-made forms and the material effects of light. A year studying in Rome with the European Honors Program at Rhode Island School of Design, where she earned her BFA, marked the genesis of a career-long interest in architecture and structure in nature as a subject for her work. She received her MFA in painting at the University of Pennsylvania. Gillespie’s awards include a visiting artist position at the American Academy in Rome, a residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts and a Fellowship at the Carina House on Monhegan Island, Maine. She is the recipient of a 2004 Artist Fellowship form the Massachusetts Cultural Counsel.

Ms. Gillespie has exhibited in numerous solo shows in Boston and Maine and many group shows throughout the northeast. Her work may be found in the collections of The Boston Athenaeum, Fidelity Investments, Wellington Management Company, Mount Sinai Hospital, and the Hertz Corporation among others.

Eileen Gillespie was born in New York City and has lived and worked as a professional artist in Maine, New York, Boston and Connecticut. She currently divides her time between Maine and the Connecticut Shoreline with her husband and young son.

 “The interplay between form and light, structure and surroundings that I originally found in architecture, now, more than two decades later, appears in the trees and the woods that surround my studio. Trees are my current subject. The texture and pattern in the bark, their place in the landscape and their physical presence all appeal to my sensibility. I’m drawn to the massive forms often in contrast with graceful lines and gestures that span these majestic structures. My drawings and paintings represent a continued interest in form, pattern and structure in landscape.”

eileengillespie.com

David Vickery

I’ve been working from my Cushing, Maine, studio since 1991. My work is about the merger of nature and culture – an attempt to make sense of our place in the world. I look at interior spaces and our imprint on the landscape with an eye for the imperfect, quirky, and sometimes elegant adaptations we’ve made in order to live here.

“While I usually just paint whatever interests me, the work that results inevitably ends up integrating the natural world with the man-made. I seem to have an inner agenda, which is always seeking a harmony between the two, as well as a need to reconcile the inner, psychological world with the outer world of everyday experience and optical fact.”

dvickery.com

1992 Residents

Gary Ambrose

In writing about his working process for the 2006 Carina House residency catalog, Ambrose underscored how essential the landscape of Maine is to his working method:

“My creative process begins with hiking and climbing in the western mountains of Maine and sailing to coastal islands. I seek to be in motion in the vocabulary of landscape . . . I look for a bonding, a feeling of import that is not cognitive and understood but intuitive and mysterious.”

A resident of Maine since the mid 1970s, when he founded the fine arts curriculum at Hebron Academy, Gary Ambrose has had a long career as an educator in the arts. He is currently professor of sculpture and three-dimensional design at the Maine College of Art.

Janet Conlon Manyan

Janet Conlon Manyan was a Maine-based artist and educator who specialized in painting the figure and still-life composition. She received her MFA from Brooklyn College in 1991 and taught at The Maine College of Art, receiving the Leadership in Art Education Award in 2011 and an honorary doctorate in 2014.

From the artist:

The things I paint I know well - usually objects of the table or produce and packaging from the market. Transparent and reflective materials, plastic, tissue paper, etc. help me break my images into pieces of color and the identity of the objects become lost in my observations.  The specificity of the object becomes lost in the reconstruction of color and form and then reappears in the illusion of reality as the correct relation of pieces of paint are assembled.  I am interested in the materiality of my subject and the essential, even spiritual aspect that I believe to also be present in nature.

1991 Residents

Jim Dugan

Jim Dugan lives in Rockland, Maine, and works as a commercial photographer, graphic designer, teacher and Licensed Maine Guide.
jimdugan.com

Connie Hayes

I am a painter. I borrow views to paint in other people’s cottages, homes and treasured places when they are away. My Borrowed Views project began in 1990. My Monhegan residency in 1991 was an extended, private time to study one location in depth. That extraordinary opportunity propelled the idea of Borrowed Views into a sustained project that continues to this day. In 2004 it generated a book on my life borrowing views and my process as an artist.

I received a BFA in 1980 from the Maine College of Art and an MFA in 1982 from Tyler in Rome and Philadelphia. I attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1989 and in 2004 had a one person show at the Farnsworth Museum. An extended version of my education, exhibition history and upcoming events is listed on my web site along with many images of my paintings.

conniehayes.com

1990 Residents

Wesley Freese

Freese received his B.F.A. in 1989 from the University of Southern Maine. He currently lives in Seattle and writes about his work at www.wfreese.wordpress.com. For the exhibition catalogue, The Carina House Residency, he described how his Monhegan fellowship dramatically changed the course of his artistic practice:

“As for my painting, I used the [residency] to make a drastic break in my method and style. On Monhegan, I changed from being a figurative painter who drew from nature and/or iconographic images from popular culture, to a painter seeking more abstraction. This change had such a lasting effect that today I am still an abstract painter . . .  Much of the rejuvenation was due, no doubt, to the time off, but also to a certain truth about the harmony that exists there between the people, the land, and sea.”

wfreese.wordpress.com

Marguerite Payne Robichaux

As urban sprawl and commercial and industrial development claim more and more of our land, it is important for me to record and celebrate the beauty and dignity of our natural world. I live on the edge of wilderness, travel to remote destinations and seek out unspoiled places. These landscapes figure prominently in my work because they figure prominently in my life. I am drawn to the order and geometry of fields and pastures, the noble sweep of farmlands, the grandeur of mountain peaks and rugged coastline, the serenity of still water, and the power of rushing rivers and waterfalls. I am passionate about conveying a sense of awe and respect for our disappearing wilderness.

Living in a state with a long and venerable tradition of landscape painting, I have had to find my own voice. To go beyond the picturesque and purely representational and to paint without sentimentality, I have had to trust my visual intuition and create a language of my own. The dripping paint and unconcealed edges – a staple of nonrepresentational painting – are true to the integrity of the medium. Thin, transparent paint loosely brushed, wiped away and smeared, and remnants of original graphite drawings suggest that these images are artifice. I make paintings, not landscapes.

I paint to bear witness to the importance of preserving our natural environment. I create to leave a visual legacy. I believe my paintings make a difference.

www.puckergallery.com

1989 Residents

Libby Lyman

A graduate of Bennington College where she received a B.A. in sculpture and drawing, Libby Lyman was selected as the first Monhegan artist resident in 1989. In the 2006 exhibition catalogue about the artist residency program, Lyman described the critical role that the experience played in launching her artistic career:

"When I headed for Monhegan Island, I imagined a wonderful block of time to work on my art with reckless abandon, without concern or thought for those pesky duties of life. It was that, but it was also so much more.

I welcomed the solitude and Monhegan’s vast beauty. Hiking the island every day, watching the ducks and gulls grow up, seeing how close I could wander to the deer, snorkeling in the great tide pool on the other side, sitting staring at the ocean and allowing dreams to surface. The islanders were so friendly and supportive, yet so respectful of my time. Living in the unchanged home of one very creative soul was truly inspiring. It all gave me internal room and enabled the passions of my heart to bubble up. It shifted the direction of my life, and I thank the Carina residency for its part in my creative development."

Sarah Knock

Sarah Knock is represented by Greenhut Galleries in Portland where she has had numerous solo exhibits. Her work has also been exhibited at Colby College , the Portland Museum of Art, the Farnsworth Museum , the Penobscot Marine Museum , and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. She is the recipient of an individual fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission and a Carina House Residency on Monhegan Island . Her work is in the collections of MBNA, L.L. Bean, TD Banknorth and others. Her work is also represented in the following books: Paintings of Maine , The Art of Monhegan Island , and The Art of Maine in Winter. Her work was featured in July 2004 in Down East magazine in an article entitled The Beguiling Waterscapes of Freeport ‘s Sarah Knock. She shows her work frequently at Greenhut Galleries in Portland.

sarahknock.com