Photography has been Cindy McIntyre's passion for a quarter century.  The artistic journey has taken her through many expressions, starting in 1975 with photographing landscapes - always her first love.  Some of her most fascinating experiences have come from photojournalism, where she is an unabashed voyeur into the lives of others.  The desire to make a living with photography and writing led her to a life of freelancing, with an occasional salaried job, but even then her art was expressed in two coffee-table books, "Seattle, Tacoma and the Puget Sound Region," (1987; 1993) and "Tacoma" (1989), as well as several gallery exhibitions in Washington state.

Upon moving to Maine in 1993, she experienced a rebirth of her art along with a renewal of her own spirit.  Most of her work since then has been award-winning Hand-Painted Photography - black-and-white silver gelatin photographs painted individually with oils, pencils and watercolors - often in the fauvist tradition.  One of her originals was selected by the Maine Arts Commission to hang in the Maine State capitol complex in Fall 2003.  In June 2005 she won 3rd place at the top-rated Allentown (Buffalo, NY) Festival in the Mixed-Media category, and she will be the featured artist at the Belfast (Maine) Art in the Park in 2006.  

Also in 2006 her focus has turned more fully to the digital realm, combining color and hand-painted photography with the transformative power of the pixel.  Thus she indulges her love for "wild beast" color and the idea of transformation, showing the evolution of an image or an idea as a series of Mosaics in square format.  Her newest works, as well as prints from film, are made with the Epson 2200 giclee printer using archival papers and inks, with a longevity rating of at least 80 years as determined by Wilhelm Imaging Research, an independent testing lab.  Some are even further embellished by hand.

Capping a five-year project, she has combined her collection of vintage postcards of Maine with modern-day versions of the same scene in her "A Century Apart - Maine Then and Now" pairings - published by Down East Books in 2004.  A companion book, "Maine at Work and Play," featuring more old postcards, is due out in 2006. 

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