Healing Arts Exhibits

William Irvine is exhibiting at St. Joseph Internal Medicine, The Gallery at 900 Broadway until March 28, 2025, Courtesy of Courthouse Gallery Fine Art, Ellsworth, Maine.

William Irvine is a renowned Scottish-American artist who has spent over 60 years capturing the beauty of the Maine coast through seascapes, figurative paintings, and still lifes. Born in Troon, Scotland, Irvine’s passion for art began early, leading him to study at Marr College and the Glasgow School of Art, where he earned a degree in drawing and painting in 1953.

After serving in the Scottish army, Irvine immersed himself in London’s avant-garde art scene, exhibiting his work in prominent galleries. In 1968, he and his wife Stephanie moved to downeast Maine, where the fishing villages and coastal landscapes inspired a transformative period in his

work. Combining abstraction and representation, Irvine developed his signature style, reflecting the balance of nature and community life.

Settling in Blue Hill and later Brooklin, Maine, Irvine created much of his celebrated work in studios overlooking the sea, drawing daily inspiration from his surroundings. His art continues to capture the essence of Maine’s coastal heritage, blending poetic sensibility with bold, textured compositions.

Rhea Côté Robbins is exhibiting at St. Joseph Healthcare, The Hospital Lobby at 360 Broadway until March 28, 2025.

Rhea Côté Robbins was raised bilingually in Waterville’s Franco-American South End neighborhood and now resides in South Brewer, Maine. She is the author of the creative nonfiction memoirs down the Plains and Wednesday’s Child, the latter a winner of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Chapbook Award and featured in many university and college courses. Côté Robbins also edited Canuck and Other Stories, an anthology of early 20th-century Franco-American women writers exploring their immigration experiences.

As the founder and director of the Franco-American Women’s Institute (FAWI), Côté Robbins has worked to highlight the contributions of French heritage women. To celebrate FAWI’s 20th anniversary, she edited Heliotrope—French Heritage Women Create!, a collection of 130 submissions showcasing their creativity and impact. Her writing and research have appeared in numerous publications, and she continues to explore the “hidden contributions” of French heritage women through her ongoing work.

Her artistic endeavors span mixed media, collage, graphic design, photography, ceramics, and publications, with exhibitions across Maine, New Hampshire, and Washington, D.C.

Côté Robbins is a graduate of the University of Maine at Presque Isle’s Art Department, where she participated in the European Art Study Tour. She holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Maine at Farmington and is recognized as Faculty Emeriti and Retired from the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Maine, Orono.

• Location: First floor, St. Joseph Hospital, 360 Broadway, Neuroscience wing

You will find the paintings of Diana Young on the first floor of the hospital. Young remembers being an artist since she was a child, in fact, she has been “making pictures” by painting landscapes in Maine and from her travels throughout the world for nearly 50 years.

Her work leans toward line, direction, force and motion, rather than form and naturalism. For her, an outdoor place is a point of departure rather than a study in nature. She is always looking for “the kernel of a place.”

“What makes an artist? Doing art with enthusiasm for many years is the proof. What starts our looking strange may become accepted as beautiful over time and I’m hoping that happens to me. Being an artist could well be one part talent and nine parts desire.”

Young is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited in regional galleries and across artist cooperatives throughout Maine. She continues to create art in her studio located in Bangor, Maine.

Her art can be seen at the Eastport Gallery in person during the summer months (June through September) and online year round. You can see a beautiful collection of her work online and available for purchase by visiting Flood Fine Art.

• Location: Third floor, St. Joseph Hospital, 360 Broadway, General Surgery and Urology Extension Wing

You will find colorful paintings by local artist Jill Hoy on the third floor of the hospital. Hoy’s work focuses on the qualities of Maine light in her plein air oil paintings. Strong composition, rhythm, gesture, pattern, energy, power of place, and soul are primary focal points.

“I’ve spent my summers in Deer Isle, Maine since I was ten years old. Deer Isle has raised me to be a painter,” said Hoy. Reflecting on the exhibit, she shares: “All of my oil paintings are done outside on location. My work captures both an intimate relationship with nature, along with the movements of wide-open spaces that allow our heart to expand.”

Hoy has exhibited her work extensively in Maine and in locations across the United States. You may have seen her work on the cover of an L.L. Bean catalog or a Down East Magazine publication. Hoy’s work is on display in more than 600 private and corporate collections throughout the United States and Europe, including The Jill Hoy Gallery, which is open for the season in Stonington, Maine.

• Location: Second floor, St. Joseph Hospital, 360 Broadway, Respiratory, Cardiology, and General Surgery wing

You will find contemporary landscape paintings by local artist Nina Jerome on the first floor of the hospital. As a long-time resident in Maine, Jerome finds inspiration for her work in both natural and constructed environments, drawing and painting in series that examine visual variations of place. For her, the painting process conveys her personal direction through the land as she witnesses its light, movement, and changes.

Jerome spends the warmer months in coastal Maine, a rich visual resource with its undeveloped shoreline and wide-ranging tidal fluctuations. She has also explored sense-of-place in other Maine areas. Jerome has completed residencies on two of her favorite Maine islands – Great Spruce Head Island and Great Cranberry Island – and has created paintings for fourteen public art projects in Maine including a series for the Penobscot Judicial Center in Bangor.

This exhibit includes paintings dating from 1980 to the present. Notable series presented here are “Quiet Tension” (1995), a record of Jerome’s walks along the rocky shore in Addison, ME, “Altered Landscape” (1986), construction views of the Veterans Remembrance Bridge across the Penobscot River, “Winter Power” (2005), a series depicting the steam plume marking the location of an electricity generating plant along the Penobscot River, “From the Kayak” (2006), images of floating between sea and sky in Addison, ME, and “Homage to the Ocean” (2013), a series that wove words written about climate change into the images of the sea.

• Location: Fifth floor, St. Joseph Hospital, 360 Broadway, Elevator Lobby

You will find beautiful images by local artist LeeAnne Mallonee on the fifth floor of the hospital right as you step off the elevator. These beautiful images, created in Bangor and Camden, showcase LeeAnne’s unique blend of analog and digital collage. Her work explores the concept of internal landscapes and the infinite ways they can be expressed.

Mallonee believes at its heart, a photograph is light and shadow, and the spaces between. It is mercurial and moody, and it illuminates the world in ways that words cannot. It is a disclosure, a deception, captured in time. Photographer Duane Michals calls it “the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.” Photography injects the past into the present, and explains us to ourselves.

The development of digital cameras offered Mallonee an explosion of possibilities for the kind of spontaneous, abstract art-making she loves.

• Location: First floor, St. Joseph Hospital, 360 Broadway, Main Lobby

Katia Mason, a Boston native with cherished memories of summers in Corea, Maine, has donated her evocative piece “Beneath the Surface 49.6.” Additionally, we have acquired two more of her works, “Beneath the Surface – BNS 52.11” and “Beneath the Surface 52.10,” with funds from the Healing Arts Fund. 

Mason’s artwork, influenced profoundly by her experiences along the coast, embodies themes of comfort, healing, and inspiration. “Living on the coast, I can sit in awe of what is revealed, hidden, and carried away by the ebb and flow of the tidal cycle,” says Mason. “Beneath the Surface 49.6 is a narrative of hope and inspiration, a visual expression of MOMENTUM and what is possible when we align desire and action.” 

The Littlefield Gallery of Winter Harbor, represented by Jane and Kelly Littlefield, played a crucial role in bringing Mason’s work to St. Joseph Healthcare. Their passion for fine art, education, and community commitment facilitated this meaningful collaboration. The Littlefield‘s’ dedication extends beyond their gallery walls, embodying values that align perfectly with our mission. 

“Human Beings are the perfect design of mind, body, and spirit,” Mason adds. “When we are wounded, the healing process requires multiple approaches and forms of assistance to support the total system in recovering. My choice to donate ‘Beneath the Surface 49.6’ to St. Joseph Hospital was motivated by their Healing Arts Program and their commitment to support the whole person.”