*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, Vermette has been painting in oil, watercolor, and pastel for over forty years and has won numerous awards for his work, including the Marilyn Sabin, Lauran Coleman and the Beverly Awards at the 12th,13th and 14th Biennial North American Open Shows of the New England Watercolor Society where he has been awarded signature membership. Most recently, Vermette is the 2018 first place winner of the Castine Plein Air Festival, and was the Festival winner in 2015, in Castine, Maine. Vermette 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 the 2011 Baxter State Park Artist-in-Residence. He was also an Artist-in-Residence at Acadia National Park twice in 1999 and 2006. His watercolors, oils, and pastels are in private collections throughout the country and internationally. In Maine, his works have been shown at 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, The Island Institute in Rockland, the Thomas Moser Gallery in Freeport, the Bates College art Museum, the Attleboboro Museum in MA, and the L.C.Bates Museum. He is currently represented by the Frame and Art Gallery in Yarmouth, The Lupine Gallery on Monhegan Island, the Northlight Gallery in Millinocket, and the Gleason Fine Art Gallery where he recently had a major show of his work back in September 2nd, 2016. Vermette 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. Vermette’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.