Explore Ogunquit’s maritime past, art, and cultural history at The Ogunquit Heritage Museum at the Captain James Winn House (at 86 Obeds Lane, Ogunquit, Maine).
The 2023 season opens Thursday, June 1, continuing through October 31, Tuesdays – Saturdays, 1-5 p.m. Opening party and reception for artist Don Gorvett on June 17, 2-5 p.m. at the Winn House.
This summer the Ogunquit Heritage Museum’s Parlor Room Gallery is excited to present Don Gorvett, an Ogunquit Journey 1968 to Present, an intimate exhibit of selected early etchings, paintings, and woodcuts recalling his years in Ogunquit.
RELATED: Have you seen some of the AMAZING work and Ogunquit Art Colony history being shared at our Ogunquit Art Colony Facebook Group?
Don Gorvett is acclaimed for his reduction woodcuts recording maritime subjects from Boston to Portland, with Ogunquit being an essential experience to his development as an artist.
Patricia Dateo, president of the Friends of the Ogunquit Heritage Museum, states, “We are absolutely thrilled to exhibit Don’s work. He’s lived here. Gorvett expresses the spirit of the place, the cove, the dunes, the village, and those fantastic clouds. Akin to Charles Woodbury, who ‘painted in verbs,’ Don’s work is vibrant and expressive.”
Dateo notes that Don Gorvett is a vital part of Ogunquit’s art heritage. “He’s not only important as an artist, he’s also a member and former president of the Ogunquit Art Association founded in 1928 by Charles H. Woodbury, Gertrude Fiske, and other area artists, and Gorvett, like Woodbury and Henry Strater, who built the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, instructs student interns each summer to whom, like all great artists, he transfers his knowledge.”
Continue reading below for additional information…
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Additional Information About “Don Gorvett, an Ogunquit Journey 1968 to Present” at Ogunquit Heritage Museum
Mr. Gorvett arrived in Ogunquit in 1968, the summer preceding his studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. His purpose was to isolate himself and concentrate on painting.
Through the encouragement of his high school teacher Elinor Marvin and long-time Ogunquit resident Annabelle Lewis, who offered a one-room cabin to him, Don continued his many secluded summers in Ogunquit. Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, Don could be spotted painting on the Marginal Way, in the dunes and marshes, or traveling through town on his bicycle with a wet canvas mounted to the French easel carried on his back. In addition to painting he explored printmaking techniques in his Berwick Road cabin and in the 90’s, once a full-time Ogunquit resident, he established his printmaking studio on Chestnut Road.
Don’s reduction woodcuts are complex colorful tapestries of his surroundings, which are greatly influenced by his passions for history, music, and the activities of working harbor towns.
“In art, my idea is not to illustrate what I see. Instead, I seek to disassemble what is before me, rearranging and interpreting my subject. Picture-making is of little interest to me.” Don asserts, “It is not my goal to remind people of what they already know, but rather to inform the viewer of a way of seeing that they are unaccustomed to, and to show them a world in a new light. The viewing experience should be more than one of confirmation, but one of the experience of discovery.”
Don initiated several galleries over the years in Ogunquit, Portsmouth, and Gloucester. Presently he maintains his Market Street gallery in Portsmouth. His new studio and second gallery are in Gloucester at the historic Beacon Marine Basin, a working marina, where he exhibits his work and that of other regionally and nationally known artists.
Don Gorvett woodcuts are in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Boston Athenaeum, MA; Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University, UK; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; and Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.
View a video about Don Gorvett creating “Moonlight Drawbridge”
Images of Artwork by Don Gorvett
Additional 2023 Programming at Ogunquit Heritage Museum
This summer Ogunquit Heritage Museum will also present Lobstering in Perkins Cove and The History of the Old Village Inn. The museum houses an extensive Littlefield Library with historic records on Maine families and towns, and a replica of the Ogunquit dory.
The Captain James Winn House is an 18th century cape with native plant gardens nestled in the Dorothea Jacob Grant Common. The circa 1780 building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
Admission is free and donations are always appreciated.
Available for purchase are selected prints by Don Gorvett and a variety of publications by noted local authors and artists including Charles H. Woodbury’s Force Through Delicacy.
For more information about the Heritage Museum, visit our website ogunquitheritagemuseum.com call 207-646-0296 or email HeritageMuseum@ogunquit.gov.
For more information about Don Gorvett, contact Vivienne Gale vivienne@dongorvettgallery.com or visit the website dongorvettgallery.com.
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