Farnsworth museum gets grant to buy Matinicus painting

The Farnsworth Art Museum has received a grant of $5,000 from the Artists’ Resource Trust to help buy artist Sam Cady’s painting “Breakwater, Matinicus” (2000).

Since its inception in 1997, the Artists’ Resource Trust has provided grants to nonprofit arts institutions throughout New England that support the creation of new work by New England artists.

“Breakwater, Matinicus” is oil on a 42-inch-by-63-inch shaped canvas. The painting’s vertical foreground of quarried granite blocks converges with the horizontal background of natural rock forms, suggesting the interrelationship of man and nature that is integral to life in Maine. This example of Cady’s art is his first to be represented in a public collection in Maine.

Cady is one of the most important contemporary artists native to Maine. While Cady has had numerous favorable exhibitions in New York, Boston and elsewhere, and his work has long garnered critical acclaim nationally, it has been relatively little known in Maine.

Born in Boothbay Harbor in 1943, Cady has recently returned to his home state to pursue his art year-round. After receiving his bachelor of arts degree from the University of New Hampshire in 1965, Cady received his master of fine arts degree from Indiana University in 1967. From 1984 until he returned to Maine, he served as an instructor in the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Cady now lives in Friendship.