For more than a decade, artist Arthur Cadieux (1943-2015) was one of Eastport’s quiet gems. With a twinkle in his eye and a welcoming smile, he would open his home-studio to whomever showed an interest. There in his first-floor double parlor, canvas and paper paintings were pinned to the walls, leaning on easels or rolled up in corners. Paintbrushes bristled from jars, and paint in every form was on hand. He reveled in the Downeast landscape, its colors and moods. “I use nature as a jumping-off place to make those feelings within come alive in the work… I want the color to proclaim the paintings, to say this is nature on the verge of coming alive out of the Downeast gray. I want those feelings to project an explosion of emotion, of passion.”

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Cadieux was born in Belfast, Maine. He studied at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and received his Master’s of Fine Art from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He and his wife, Helene Hansen, had one son, Adam, in 1970. Over the years he taught painting at universities and museums from South Dakota to Michigan, including the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine. In the 1980s he moved with his family to Washington, D.C., where he became a figure in the D.C. arts scene, with work at the World Bank/Internation Monetary Fund and the Washington Project for the Arts. Following the death of his wife, Cadieux moved to Eastport in 2004, where he retired and painted full-time.

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During Cadieux’s lifetime his works were in exhibitions in the United States, Hungary and France. Later in life his works were shown up and down the Maine coast. He was a member of the Eastport Gallery, and his work is part of the permanent collection of the Tides Institute & Museum of Art.

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With thanks to Adam Cadieux for the use of information and quote from Arthur Cadieux: Selected Works.