View the exhibit, meet the artist, and support the library through art sales.

Carrie Jones

Mar 25, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Havana.

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NORTHEAST HARBOR—When fine artist Joan Vienot moved from Florida to Downeast Maine approximately three years ago, she began an adventure.

“My mission was to paint the rocky coastline; the first task being to learn how to convincingly paint rocks,” she wrote on her website.

Rocks were everywhere. The granite ledges jutted above the Atlantic Ocean. Some rolled over the tops of Acadia National Park’s mountains. Some peeked through the top soil of blueberry barrens.

But, it wasn’t enough for Vienot to see the rocks, to learn how to capture them with brush and oil paint. She wanted to understand them.

“So I signed up for a local geology course during my first winter in Maine. It was taught by Duane and Ruth Braun, the geologist-authors of the excellent guidebook sold in the visitor center at Acadia National Park,” she explained.

The learning began.

“Acadia National Park is actually the bottom part of a massive volcano that erupted some 420 million years ago during intense tectonic plate activity. In brief, 550 million years ago, Gander, the small drifting land mass that was to become much of Maine, detached from the supercontinent of Gondwana. Gander eventually bumped into and attached to Laurentia, the precursor core of North America. Another land mass named Avalon then collided with Gander on its way to becoming part of Nova Scotia. This collision caused a line of violent volcanic eruptions along the ocean-edge of Gander. At least four super-volcano complexes formed the coast of the region known today as Down East Maine. The volcanic activity was some of the most intense in history,” she wrote.

Then mile-thick glaciers moving across the land pulled off two miles of the rock. The volcano mountains lost their tops, stripped away by the movement.

“Mt. Desert Island, where most of Acadia National Park is located, is all that remains of one of these volcanoes, ground down to a maximum elevation of 1527′ today. The island, known as MDI, is the bottom of a caldera 10 miles wide, originally ¼ the size of Yellowstone’s caldera. The rock of MDI was formed in that molten caldera, mostly granite with basalt intrusions, with outer edges of gabbro, solidified volcanic ash, and breccia. Much of the granite contains iron, giving it the pink and orange colors I so love. MDI is minutes from my home, and provides infinite inspiration for local and visiting artists,” she explained.

Before Maine and before Florida, Vienot taught art to high school students in Colarado, which is where she’s from and where she earned a B.A. in Fine Art from the University of Colorado. In Florida, she headed to the northwest of the state and served on the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County board, volunteered for the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters and was part of Forgotten Coast en Plein Air event as Florida’s Finest Plein Air Ambassador for multiple years.

This April, Northeast Harbor Library will host Vienot’s solo exhibit of 60 small paintings focusing on Coastal Maine and its rocks. Most range from 8×10 to 10×20.

You can preview the exhibit at https://www.artworkarchive.com/rooms/joan-vienot/c3fe03.

On Thursday, April 9, the library will host a Meet-the-Artist reception from 5:30-7:30 pm. Twenty percent of all sale proceeds will be donated to the library, which is located at 1 Joy Road, Northeast Harbor.

To learn more about Vienot, she is at joanvienot.com and on social media at JoanVienotArt.

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