"Delta Sorority Discovers the Arc Sine"

Guertin's amalgamated images (manipulated digital photos) cross a variety of lines and announce themselves to you as soon as you walk in the door. A hybrid of photography and hand-colored photos with a screenprinted feel to them, these summertime beach scenes seem almost garish at first glance, resonating with ultra-bright yellows, oranges and blues in near psychedelic fashion. But the loud colors grow on you and emerge at a distance to reveal great depth and breadth of dimension whether it's a repeated scene of surfers walking along the water's edge or children playing in the water against a picturesque background.

As you give closer scrutiny to these images, which he calls chronophotographs, you notice that Guertin has combined a variety of visual techniques as if in homage to various movements. There's Warholian pop art elements here and some of the images have the complicated conceptual art sense of Jerry Uelsmann and others, but he also outlines figures in black in something of a fauvist nod. Don't be put off by the tie-dyed colors; give it some time and attention. You'll enjoy the reward.

- John Pantalone in Newport This Week, June 23, 2010

To say that internationally exhibited artist Michael Guertin is a photographer would not be telling the entire story. He does, in fact, utilize his photographs in the creation of his highly imaginative images of which he says "...reveal the world not so much as it is, but as it could be seen....This collection of work is certainly colorful; color contrasts and color harmonies have been carefully coordinated for each image. Expect to see a lot of green, gold, blue and aqua; summer colors, happy colors. And there's a lot of repetition, most of it naturally derived from the repeating elements of nature." Guertin will include images representing several series of his work in the show. As he explains, one group, the Wave Scan Series, "...reveals the rhythmic structure of waves over time, each similar to the preceding one, but also strikingly different." In characterizing his work generally, Guertin adds, "These compositions exist somewhere between the world of photography and that of painting and, you will see, they are quite unlike either. They are dramatic. They are dynamic. Above all else they are likely to bring a smile to your face and to give you more than a moment's reflection in their viewing."

- DeBlois Gallery, Newport, RI June 2010

Movement, form and structure, all combine to give "Noon at Nauset" a dreamlike landscape under a surreal and swirling sky.  The juxtaposition of figures with the darker structural mass on the right lead to an open and endless expanse to the left - and just when the eye looks for ocean another dream-like scape of low lying clouds is in the horizon line.  Great composition and imagination.

- Geoffrey Smith, Juror, Cape Cod Art Association, January 2008

I loved the mystery inherent in Zenway, LXVI  by Michael Guertin. This landscape, in the spirit of Jerry Uelsmann, and perhaps inspired by the photography of John Paul Caponigro, asked me to explore a different reality. Is this a seashore from some other dimension. I looked closely, my nose just two inches away, wondering, "Where am I?"  Very imaginative, very cool..

-Jan Armor, Juror, Wickford Art Association, September 2007