Heather Gaudio Fine Art is pleased to present Charlie Hewitt: Good Shepherd, on view November 22, 2025 – January 10, 2026. The public is invited to attend an opening reception for the artist on November 22nd, 4-6pm.
Hewitt’s extensive artistic career spans over five decades and encompasses a prolific output of paintings, drawings, prints, works on paper, sculpture, ceramics, and even film. The exhibition will feature a new series of paintings completed this year alongside signature illuminated wall-mounted sculptures.
Raised in Maine, Hewitt came from a large working-class family and moved to New York City as a young aspiring artist. Immediately drawn to the grittiness the artworld embodied at the time, Hewitt’s social and working milieu included then relatively unknown artists and luminaries such as Elaine DeKooning, Phillip Guston, among others. However successful and vast Hewitt’s trajectory and social circle grew, the artist never forgot his roots and always maintained a foothold in the mill-town communities of his childhood. His artistic investigations across the plethora of media he has delved into is marked by a visual energy, the graphic imagery inspired by ship-making tools and equipment. Hard edges are combined with gestural layers of paint that have been applied, erased and re-applied with sponges, squeegees, brushes and other implements.
The works in the exhibition take the artist into a direction filled with intention toward optimism and positivity. Made with the same physicality he uses in his sculpture and printmaking, the artist emphasizes the mark of the line, utilizing a razor blade to cut out his paper forms on the canvas. Building his own palette, the artist uses a polymer layer to adhere the shapes on the surface, juxtaposing them to make way for new color relationships to emerge. If there are areas the artist is not fully satisfied with, he layers them with other cut out forms, erasing what lies beneath. “Mistakes are glorious”, the artist states frankly and unapologetically. For Hewitt, these new paintings are all about energetic contours, shape, edge, and where the outlined forms meet. If, during the process, the build-up of material became too thick to his liking, the artist tamed the textured surface by sanding it down. There is nothing didactic about these new paintings, their visual language is purely abstract and devoid of narrative. The work speaks for itself, yet there are recognizable signature motifs: suns, moons, whimsical notations and discernable calligraphic accents. The results are colorful, balanced and rhythmic compositions that are extensions of Hewitt’s sculpture and woodcut prints, graphic imagery that manifests confidence and purpose.
Exhibiting equal candor if but with more representation and language are the wall-mounted illuminated sculptures, the most renowned of which is Hewitt’s Hopeful sign. Originally commissioned as a site-specific sculpture for the rooftop of the Speedwell building in Portland, Maine, the stylistically retro sculpture has taken a life of its own in its various iterations, acting as reference to a nostalgic past, then becoming a beacon for optimism during the COVID pandemic, ensuing political upheaval and these unprecedented times. For this exhibition, Hopeful will deliver its message as a colorful neon-mirrored work. Other electrified sculptures on view hold personal meaning to the artist and will also resonate with viewers with their universal, recognizable imagery.
Hewitt’s works are included in many important public, corporate and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Brooklyn Museum in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; the Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, among others.
Heather Gaudio Fine Art specializes in emerging and established artists, offering painting, works on paper, photography, and sculpture. The gallery provides a full-range of art advisory services, from forming and maintaining a collection, to securing secondary market material, to assisting with framing and installation. The focus is on each individual client, selecting art that best serves his or her vision, space, and resources. The six exhibitions offered every year are designed to present important talent and provide artwork appealing to a broad range of interests. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday; 10:30am to 5:30pm; and by appointment.
