The influence of an artist residency is not always immediate. 

“It’s like groping in the dark,” said Portsmouth painter Katherine Doyle. “Eventually, there is something there.”

Doyle and seven other New England artists participated in a 2009 residency program at the Clews Center for the Arts in France, which has its U.S. headquarters in Portsmouth. Their work is now on display at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in “Contemporaries: The Artists of La Napoule Art Foundation,” through June 26. 

The exhibition celebrates the 60th anniversary of the La Napoule Art Foundation, which was established by Marie Clews, wife of American sculptor Henry Clews, as an international arts center. It also shows how the residency program influenced the artists’ work.    

One of Doyle’s paintings, called “Untitled (Kiss),” is a study for the more developed version that was recently included in a group show at the Portsmouth Museum of Art. It shows a woman bending over to support her limp daughter’s body. Dripping paint blends their faces as they appear to kiss. It’s tender but morbid, natural but intriguing.

The artist had been inspired by mythology and wanted to reinterpret it for the present, she said in a recent interview at the museum. She was focused mostly on Persephone’s decent into the underworld and the notions of a girl becoming a woman, of leaving and returning, of the inner world meeting the outer.

Doyle said part of the garden outside the Chateau de La Napoule was orderly while another section, where she would often walk at night, had been left to grow without influence. “I kept going to the wild side,” she said.

What’s construed as darkness is often fear of the unknown, Doyle said. Something might appear different in the dark, but there’s usually nothing to be afraid of. “When I think of dark, I don’t think negative. I think mysterious,” she said.

Her goal while away from home was to be open to possibilities by allowing herself to go places she didn’t know well. “It was amazing,” she said. “It changed my life.”

Doyle is a highly accomplished figure painter, but as part of her commitment to show more vulnerability and be less predictable, she recently began painting directly with the body using people covered in paint, chocolate or earth, she said. 

Some of the other artists in the residency program felt compelled to change their artistic styles and approaches right away, during the residency. Tanja Alexia Hollander, for instance, started photographing people at the chateau rather than her usual landscapes and is now attempting to capture all of her Facebook friends for a new project.

Rebecca Litt started painting the pot-bellied, Speedo-clad vacationers who floated in the Mediterranean Sea below her tower studio. When she returned to New York, she said, the swimmers took to rooftops in her paintings, trying to hold on to something lost.

After visiting ruins, they appeared as fragments in the work of Alison Hildreth, who draws with ink on rice paper. This new way to structure her work, organized like an ornamental garden, also has roots in the landscape architecture she studied in college.

Emily Brown was also affected by the historical nature of the grounds and now continues to draw in the forests of Maine, incorporating some of her incomplete drawings from the residency. She said she had ignored her interest in collage until now.

Also recently opened at the Ogunquit Museum is “Tradition and Excellence: Building an American Modernist Collection,” featuring highlights from the museum’s permanent collection through Oct. 31. The collection, started by famed painter Henry Strater, is centered on the history of Ogunquit and includes work by John Laurent, Robert Henri, Rockwell Kent, Charles Woodbury, and Walt Kuhn. 

The Ogunquit Museum of American Art is located at 543 Shore Road, Ogunquit, Maine, www.ogunquitmuseum.org, 207-646-4909. For more information, visit www.chateau-lanapoule.org.