“I draw constant inspiration from exploring new ways to move paint, develop ideas, and balance line and shape,” writes Jillian Herrigel.
Working in a range of mediums, including oil, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, oil stick, and collage, Herrigel approaches each piece intuitively. Having jazz playing while she paints adds to the improvising.
Herrigel’s “imaginative realism,” as she calls it, references reality without seeking strict accuracy. For instance, while inspired by a local waterfront, “Harbor Hues” is largely imagined. Using a mix of cool and warm tones, she conjures a seaside town with its wonderful jumble of houses, wharves and boats. She deploys strokes of acrylic and oil stick with equal verve.
Their oyster farm on New Meadows River inspired a series of lively watercolor-and-ink studies…
Herrigel maintains two studios, in the West Point neighborhood of Phippsburg and in Bath. The former, the East Village Gallery, features a space for displaying work on the ground floor and a studio above. She keeps art books and magazines handy, along with easels, worktables, and supplies. Likewise, her Bath studio is humming with artistic activity; she may have three or four paintings in progress at any given time.
The West Point waterfront includes a commercial building where Herrigel’s son John, daughter Bryn, and son-in-law Joe work in the ecotourism and aquaculture industries.
Their oyster farm on New Meadows River inspired a series of lively watercolor-and-ink studies which were shown at the Maine Oyster Company’s raw bar in Portland in 2019 (their motto is “farm to slurp certified”). Herrigel captures the action—harvesting, sorting, shucking—via color washes and dashing outlines. The paintings are as fresh as the mollusks on a shell.
Along with the likes of Matisse, Dufy, Kandinsky, and Chagall, Herrigel points to Maine modernists Marsden Hartley, Maurice Freedman, and John Marin as influences (the last-named painted in and around Phippsburg). She also admires the work of Great Cranberry Island painter Dorothy Eisner. A kindred exuberant spirit reigns in their work.
Herrigel grew up, she writes, “in a family that valued travel, culture, and education.” Her father, John Huntington Hanney, was a linguist with the Admiralty in London where she was born; they lived in Wales till she was six when he accepted a position at the United Nations in New York City. The family briefly resided in Garden City, Long Island, before moving to Northern Virginia, where Hanney worked at the World Bank.
Herrigel attended Mary Washington College, then part of the University of Virginia, in Fredericksburg, earning a B.A. in art history with a minor in studio art. She and her husband, Rodger Herrigel, an attorney, settled in New Jersey where she obtained teacher certification along with an MFA in art education. She taught elementary art for 13 years.
After many summers spent in Maine, which included working at Migis Lodge on Sebago Lake, Herrigel retired from teaching and moved full-time to Bath. Years of painting and taking workshops, she explains, “made the transition to full-time artist a natural one.”
Herrigel’s family supports various nonprofits in Maine. They foster dogs through Rescue Charlie’s Friends in Woolwich and Passion for Pets Rescue in Brunswick. Rodger has served on the boards of the Maine Island Trail Association and the Phippsburg Land Trust.
They contribute in many ways to the West Point community.
Whether painting sailboats on the water, Bath Iron Works, or a still life, Herrigel brings a dashing brilliance to her subjects. She relishes her studio and plein air time—and misses her friend, painter Donna Coffin (1942-2024), with whom she painted for many years.
“It was a standing joke,” she recalls, “that as we listened to Amos Lee’s ‘Live at Red Rocks’ I would do about three paintings to her one, breaking all the rules or many of them.” Herrigel will draw on memories of that special companionship in art as she paints the world around her.
Herrigel’s Phippsburg studio is open year-round by appointment. She also shows at the Maine Art Gallery in Wiscasset and the Centre Street Arts Gallery in Bath. You can find more of her work at www.jillianherrigel.com.
What TO Read Next...
