For the month of January, the Truro Public Library is happy to present abstracts and garden florals by accomplished Pond Road artist, the late Hal McIntosh. 

With an artistic career lasting over 60 years, Hal McIntosh’s influence on our community is profound. His bold abstractions, tranquil waterscapes, and stirring portraiture, all masterfully painted with a touch of McIntosh’s signature Orientalism, have been widely exhibited and are part of numerous regional collections, both private and public. As a young bohemian on Cold Storage Beach beginning in the 1950’s, Hal summered in a fishnet shack with no plumbing or electricity for ten years and then enjoyed summers at an adjacent cottage on the beach that he purchased. There he found inspiration from the meeting of the sea and sky. His cottage, tucked at the base of a Cold Storage Beach dune has been the subject of many artists’ renderings over the years. He studied with famed Truro teacher Jerry Farnsworth at the North Truro School of Art on Pond Road and acted as his assistant for five years at the school and for one year with him in Sarasota, Florida. Farnsworth introduced him to many other celebrated artists, including Edward Hopper as well as musicians and writers who became part of a circle. Hal is remembered with great affection by his neighbors on Pond Road, by his friends and by other artists.

Born in 1927, McIntosh began his formal studies at the Detroit Art Institute in Detroit, Michigan, and the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio. At age 18, the Art Research Studio (present-day Maitland Art Center) in Maitland, Florida, selected him as the institution’s youngest-ever artist in residence. His talent later earned him the Directorship of the Academy of Fine Arts in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he served as a museum director and teacher for five years. As a resident of Central Florida, McIntosh taught at the Loch Haven Art Center in Orlando and ran his own institution known as the McIntosh School in Winter Park for 30 years. In 2011, he exhibited his sky and sea paintings in Truro where he continued to summer until the end of his life. He passed away in 2016. This exhibit of his work is curated by Stephen M. Briscoe of Larkin Gallery, Inc. with loans from the estate of Hal McIntosh.

To listen to a 2009 interview with him about his experiences in North Truro, visit https://vimeo.com/158089295