“The Headlands” by Michael Vermette, oil on canvas, 30-by-40 inches. Courtesy of Gleason Fine Art

Indian Island artist Michael Vermette opens his new show, “The Monhegan Paintings,” at Gleason Fine Art in Boothbay Harbor Thursday, Sept. 5. The show runs through Oct. 5, with a reception from 5-7 p.m. on First Friday, Sept. 6.

Vermette’s personal and professional history are as intertwined with Maine as any artist’s can be. Married to a Native American, he has lived on the Penobscot Nation’s reservation on Indian Island near Orono for most of his adult life and was the Nation’s sole art teacher until his retirement in 2023. In addition to teaching at the island school, over the course of his career, Vermette has held dozens of his popular painting workshops all over the state of Maine, from the Allagash in the far north to Mount Desert Island in the east, to Monhegan Island in the Midcoast.

Vermette is first and foremost a plein-air painter. Popularized by Claude Monet and the French Impressionists, plein-air painting has had enormous appeal to American painters.

“Painting outdoors is the greatest teacher, because you are observing ever-changing nature and trying to capture the truth of it,” Vermette said in a prepared release. “It’s about getting close enough to nature that the viewer actually enters into the space of the subject through the painting.”

In order to immerse himself in the natural world, Vermette has participated in several prestigious artist residencies, including the inaugural Allagash Wilderness Waterway visiting artist program.

Vermette loves painting in oil, the medium that allows him to do what he does best: paint with gusto and exuberance, using thick brush with paint.

The gallery is located at 31 Townsend Ave. in Boothbay Harbor. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. To view Vermette’s show and the gallery’s inventory of contemporary and estate art, visit gleasonfineart.com.