Michael Vermette
Michael E. Vermette double majored in Painting and Printmaking at the Maine College of Art, receiving his B.F.A Painting degree in 1980. He received his Certification in K-12 Art Education in 1986 through the University of Maine at Orono. A full-time artist and part-time teacher, Michael has been painting in oil, watercolor, and pastel for over forty years and has won numerous awards for his work, including the Laura Coleman and the Beverly Awards at the 12th and 13th Biennial North American Open Shows of the New England Watercolor Society. Most recently, Michael was the 2011 Baxter State Park Artist-in-Residence. Michael leads several plein air painting workshops in Maine and New Hampshire in watercolor and oil painting throughout the year. He is a Monhegan Artists' Residency Fellow and was twice an Artist-in-Residence at Acadia National Park. His watercolors, oils, and pastels are in private collections throughout the country and internationally. In Maine, his works have been shown in various galleries, including the North Light Gallery in Millinocket, the Lupine Gallery on Monhegan Island, the Elizabeth Moss Gallery in Falmouth, and The Courthouse Gallery in Ellsworth.
Michael is intrigued with the timelessness in change in his figurative and landscape paintings. He believes that visual rightness is captured in his paintings when active humanity engages with the force of nature to become a metaphor for an even deeper truth. Michael's paintings show a love of color and light with emphasis on the expressive painterly mark and form which evoke a recognizable feeling, a nostalgic memory, or emotional qualities such as the smell of salt and balsam in the air. In his oils, watercolors, and pastels he emboldens color by putting into practice traditional methods of the masters to cause the pigment to be brighter, richer, and more translucent. Careful watchfulness and attention to understated materials and detail, descriptive movement, purity of light, and the uniqueness of the atmosphere are characteristics of his personality.
Artwork
