Artist of the Month - Mike Mayone
Vermont Fine Artist
I’ve been creating artwork in various forms throughout my life. In my pre-teens, I started drawing comics and sketching ideas and inventions. Beginning in my later teens, I designed and painted signs and custom illustration and portraiture for hire. Around that time, when I painted for the fun of it, I gave the work as gifts to family and close friends. But with each new piece, I taught myself something more and learned from my experience, ultimately relying on those observations to refine my abilities.
Sometimes it takes a life-changing event to make us reassess how we live our lives and what emphasis we place on our different skills and needs. At age 28, I found myself at that crossroads and discovered that my love of nature could help me cope with traumatic change and find the strength to continue on my path ahead. For the first time in this life, my spirituality took form and matured into an understanding of past visions and distant memories, all bolstered by my appreciation for the beauty and sheer awe of the natural world. It seemed natural to channel my newfound sense of peace in my art.
Back then, I lived in Connecticut, but had visited Vermont since childhood for skiing, camping, and other outdoor activities… and I have always loved the state. After getting married in 1991, my wife and I moved to Rochester, VT the very day the local Artists Guild opened its doors. There, I first began selling work on consignment and eventually became an integral part of the team, establishing Mike Mayone Fine Art that same year. Even after moving over the mountain and buying property in East Middlebury a year later, I continued working with the Rochester guild until it eventually closed.
In 1998, I completed my new art studio above my garage – and I’m still there (although the marriage isn’t). I’ve been an artist member here at the Brandon Artists Guild since 2003, appreciating the great comradery, the high quality of work on display, the sales and the incentive to keep creating work for our gallery. I continue to teach myself something with every new painting or drawing I produce, while also teaching my students to enjoy doing the same.
One of the greatest compliments I’ve received was from a customer who explained that after the 9-11 tragedy in 2001, it was only my notecards that she mailed to New York City friends deeply affected by the disaster. She wanted to share the peacefulness of my paintings.
It’s not often that a compliment will choke me up, but that one certainly did.
A favorite bumper sticker I’ve seen reads, “Moonlight in Vermont… or starve”
So yeah, in addition to painting, I’ve had part-time work, off and on, throughout the years. It helps balance life and provide some stable income. I’m still an on-call, volunteer firefighter (43 years, 30 of them with the Middlebury Fire Dept.), work security at the Middlebury College Museum of Art (LOTS of inspiration!) and have too many other distractions. But when painting or teaching others to paint, the time just flies by… clearly, a natural indication of my love for what I do.