Artist captures Earth’s spirit in Katahdin paintings

In the literature that accompanies the “land” portion of his latest show, “Land and Sea,” Michael Vermette shares the Wabanaki fable of Wagulson, the wind bird that lives atop Mount Katahdin. Though the bird can’t be seen, the wind that rises when he flaps his wings clears the trees of dead branches and stirs stagnant waters, thus making the land healthy again.

Wagulson clearly was at work the day Vermette set off to paint his first watercolor of the mountain at Upper Togue Pond. A mighty wind came up as he was halfway through the painting, and “blew up the dust within,” pushing him to become more disciplined, more adventurous.

The resulting 23 paintings of the last two decades, which are on view at North Light Gallery in Millinocket, mark a turning point in Vermette’s career. These, coupled with a series of Monhegan paintings currently on view at Elizabeth Moss Gallery in Falmouth, are a coming out of sorts for the artist.

He has imbued his mountain paintings with a reverence for the land. In confident, vibrant brushstrokes, his watercolors enshrine the “raw beauty” he discovered at Katahdin Lake. Though other figureheads in art history have depicted the region from similar vantage points, Vermette puts a fingerprint on the landscape that is decidedly his own.

In each of his sweeping vistas, Katahdin looms large, in a purple haze, in the cold light of early winter, adorned with a necklace of trees ablaze in the crimson and gold of autumn. His oils are thick and textural, saturated with color and wrought with a sense of spirituality in nature.

A set of paintings interspersed with the landscapes show an equal respect for guide Alfred Cooper III. These portraits show Cooper in action – climbing toward a tree stand, calling a moose from a canoe on Katahdin Lake. In “Atonement,” Cooper patiently skins a bear that one of his hunters shot. This scene of a bear hanging by its arm, which is graphic but not gruesome, reminded the artist of Jesus on the cross. The resulting painting is at once jarring and redeeming.

It is also powerful. In this show, Vermette has captured the essence of the mountain in a way that walks the line between the spiritual and the earthly. His Katahdin Lake paintings possess a mastery, boldness and freedom that are sure to garner Vermette the attention his work deserves.