Alan Newberg, World on Fire: Guernica, Gaza, Ukraine, Somolia, California, 2025, Black walnut wood, 72 x 36 x 30 in

Alan Newberg describes art as both a way of thinking and a way of doing-an evolving process of responding to moments in life that demand attention. For him, each artwork emerges through hundreds or even thousands of decisions, gradually giving form to feeling. In this sense, process itself becomes content, with finished works carrying traces of their own making across time and space.

Working across sculpture in steel, clay, wax, cast metal, and carved wood, Newberg finds that material directly shapes meaning. Steel tends toward abstraction and precision, while clay and wax invite more fluid, representational forms. Wood, by contrast, offers a sensuous and responsive material encounter, especially in its subtractive carving process, where the form must be discovered within the block.

In World on Fire, carved from a six-foot black walnut log, an unexpected pocket of decay transformed the work's direction. What began as an abstract composition of shifting, plank-like forms became charged with narrative when the eroded cavity evoked imagery reminiscent of Picasso's Guernica. This encounter redirected the piece into a response to contemporary turmoil, revealing how chance, material resistance, and perception converge to generate meaning in his practice.

Karen Hackenberg, Unnatural Disasters (triptych), 2025, Archival pigment on stretched canvas w/frame, 25 x 80 x 1.5 in

Karen Hackenberg's (B.F.A., RISD) paintings were featured in MoNA's 2024 Surge exhibition as well as in her solo exhibition, Sea Change: The Art of Karen Hackenberg, at Tacoma Art Museum. Her paintings' "green" sensibility has earned a place in museums and private collections, including Portland Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, and Washington State Art Collection. She exhibits her work internationally, and is represented by Patricia Rovzar, Seattle, and Rebecca Hossack, London, UK. Karen uses humor and beauty to light a candle in the darkness of our eco-disaster weary minds. In her wry post-pop Unnatural Disasters paintings series, she interprets the effects of climate change such as recurrent large-scale fires, destructive superstorms, droughts, floods, melting glaciers, habitat loss, and species extinctions.

Linda Davidson, 03 23 22, 2022, Oil on linen on panel, 24 x 24 x 1.5 in

Linda Davidson has been working since around 2021 on a series of paintings focused on a short stretch of ravine along Thornton Creek in Seattle. Her work reflects sustained observation of a landscape that, like herself, is constantly changing.

Over time, both the ravine and the artist have proven mutable, shaped by shifting seasons, weather events, and ecological change-heavy rains, snow, drought, and the continual fall of leaves, branches, and trees. Working in direct response to these conditions, Davidson records moments of perception as they unfold, often under physically demanding circumstances of heat, cold, and distraction.

The resulting paintings form a cumulative study of place and time. Together, they act as a visual record of ongoing transformation, reflecting both the instability of the natural environment and the act of attentive looking within it.

Richard Royal, Obelisk III, 2016, Solid Glass, 5" x 5" x 9"

Richard Royal's professional life has been a commitment to creativity in blown art glass, and for over 30 years has stretched the limits of large glass sculpture. Richard is a faculty member of the Pilchuck Glass School and was the first Artist in Residence at the Waterford Crystal Factory in 1998 and 1999.

A recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts grant, Richard has recently been associated with the Corning Museum of Glass, the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Ohio State University and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His work is shown in numerous museum, public and private collections, including the IBM Collection, the Safeco Collection and the Westinghouse Collection.

Austin Cullen, Float, 2025, Archival Inkjet Print, 20 x 16 in

Austin Cullen explores the evolving relationship between technology, representation, and the natural world. As technological systems change, so too does the way we perceive and depict our surroundings. Through this body of work, Cullen examines the ethics of display and the points of overlap between humanity, landscape, and the constructed illusions of the virtual realm.

The project reflects on historical and contemporary modes of access to nature. In the past, natural history museums served as primary gateways to unfamiliar landscapes, presenting curated environments through dramatic dioramas and miniaturized scenes. Today, digital platforms allow near-instant access to images and representations of distant places. By contrasting these experiences, Cullen investigates how shifts in medium influence perception, memory, and understanding.

The framing devices used to present nature-whether museum displays, interactive virtual environments, or digital imagery-function as interpretive windows. While these frameworks guide how viewers read and understand the natural world, they can also be examined as constructs that shape and mediate our relationship to land. Museums have historically educated audiences about the environment, yet they may also create a sense of separation from it. In an era defined by global climate crisis, Cullen's work encourages a reassessment of how institutions influence our perception of nature.

Alice Dubiel, The Book of Shadows: turquoise kootenia, 2026, acrylic and mixed media resist on canvas, 15.24 x 15.24 x 6.30 cm

Alice Dubiel approaches her work as a series of visual essays exploring landscape, reproduction, and the intersection of cultural and natural systems. Influenced by ecological ideas of convergence, she investigates how life evolves along similar paths across time and environments. Working with acrylic, encaustic, mixed media, printmaking, and handmade papers, she layers maps, washes, imagery of plants and animals, text, and iridescent pigments to build complex surfaces.

Topographic maps and field-based practices-plein air painting, photographic documentation, and seasonal studies-inform her process. A residency in North Cascades National Park and experiences in Korea deepened her interest in temporality, geography, and traditional technologies. Through framed works resembling specimens and large installations that resist containment, Dubiel examines how systems of representation shape our understanding of land, ecology, and truth.

Carolynn Wicker, Summer Walk Down Boulevard, 2025, Oil Paint, 16 x 12 x 0.625 in

Carolynn Wicker works primarily in oil painting on canvas. Her practice focuses on landscapes and seascapes that she feels carry strong emotional resonance or meaning. As a Pacific Islander living on Coast Salish land, she maintains a deep connection to environments shaped by wind, water, and shifting atmospheric conditions.

Wicker uses oil paint, color, and light as expressive tools to shape mood and feeling throughout her process. Rather than aiming for direct replication of a photograph or specific scene, she is more interested in evoking emotion, memory, and nostalgia. Her paintings invite viewers to experience themselves within the landscape rather than simply observe it, encouraging a sense of immersion and emotional connection to place.

Mark Danielson, Doorway, 2018, Acrylic on Canvas, 10 x 8 in

Mark Danielson's work grows out of an interest in landscape painting, architecture, and the graphic design of the mid-20th century, and connects these influences to the computer-fabricated environments of the present day. His practice explores the intersections between these disciplines and the spaces they occupy, examining how visual languages shift across time and media.

Within this framework, various formal elements interact and respond to one another, informed by both observed and constructed worlds. Danielson's work considers how historical aesthetics and contemporary digital systems overlap, merge, and inform new ways of seeing and organizing visual experience.

Sue Danielson, Abundance, 2019, collage, 18 x 15 x 1 in, Framed. Paper size 14" x 11".

Seattle's watershed runs from the peaks of the Cascade Mountains through old- and new-growth forests, subdivisions, towns, and cities. It flows through culverts, tunnels, rivers, and creeks before reaching reservoirs, lakes, or Puget Sound. Over many years, Sue Danielson has developed an intimate connection to this watershed by tracing its waterways on foot, following its shifting "veins" through the landscape.

Her experiences in these environments serve as the foundation for her abstract paintings, collages, and installations. While walking the watershed, she often holds paradoxical emotions; grief for the forest under pressure from entropy, climate change, and development, alongside awe at its persistence, complexity, and abundance. The presence of wildlife within these systems remains a continual source of wonder.

Working from memory and emotional response, Danielson translates these experiences into layered compositions of chromatic lines, shapes, and patterns that reflect the dense stratification of growth and the shifting perceptions of space shaped by wind and light. Her process incorporates aerial perspectives and draws from, then departs from, traditional mapping as a visual framework.

Elvira Butler, Graceful, 2022, photography, 20 x 22 x 2 in

Elvira Butler's photography has been a lifelong passion, evolving from early nature studies toward more abstract expressions. Her work emphasizes dynamic energy and seeks to actively engage the viewer through movement, composition, and visual rhythm.

She works primarily in-camera, with final refinements made using digital tools. This blend of capture and post-production allows her to shape images while maintaining responsiveness to the original moment of creation.

Butler's work has been exhibited in galleries and published in magazines, calendars, and art catalogues. She has received recognition in international juried competitions, including the Monochrome Awards and a second-place placement in a national monuments competition.

Ron Pattern, Clamdiggers, 2000, Watercolor on Arches cold press paper, 21 x 28 x 1 in,

Ron Pattern approaches painting with a sense of childlike curiosity and heightened sensory awareness, seeking to capture fleeting moments and the emotional resonance of lived experience. Immersing himself daily in his local environment, he becomes captivated by the shifting drama of light and shadow, as well as the tensions created through texture, line, and form. These observations become the foundation for his studio practice.

Working primarily in acrylic on canvas, Pattern is drawn to the medium's capacity for bold realism in both landscape and portraiture. He also works in watercolor and egg tempera and is a Signature Member of the Northwest Watercolor Society.

Throughout his life, painting has served as a way of understanding and expressing his emotional connection to the world around him. For Pattern, art is both an act of observation and a deeply personal response to environment, memory, and experience. Through pigment and brush, he seeks to translate what he sees and feels into images that carry both immediacy and reflection.

Matthew Cory, Connections, 2020, acrylic on board, 35 x 39 x 3 in

Matthew R. Cory's work centers on figurative acrylic paintings, drawings, and digital illustrations that explore the relationships between humanity, nature, and spirit. Combining interests in metaphysics, philosophy, and the natural world, his compositions often incorporate a subtle sense of humor intended to engage and invite viewers into layered narratives.

Many of Cory's figures exist "in medias res" captured in moments that suggest both a preceding story and an uncertain future. This sense of suspended narrative encourages viewers to imagine how a scene emerged and what may happen next. His work aims to function both as a unified composition and as an environment rich with smaller discoveries and visual pathways.

Cory combines energetic color, repetitive patterning, figurative imagery, geometric structures, symbolism, and abstraction to create dynamic visual tension. By juxtaposing patterns with solid forms, and balancing modern and ancient, material and spiritual references, he creates works that seek harmony within complexity and contradiction.

Pat deCaro
Untitled
unknown
gouache on mylor work
17 x 14 in

Daria Agafonova-Knight, Homeland, 2025, photography, cyanotype, drywall, wire, old window, 18 x 28 x 1 in

Since 2022 and the beginning of the war, Daria Agafonova has become increasingly interested in how national borders shape identity, perception, and political consciousness. Her work reflects on the idea that the less people move beyond the boundaries of their own countries, the more those borders become embedded within their thinking and self-definition. Rather than focusing on one nation alone, she approaches this as a broader human condition, examining how limited perspectives can influence understanding across cultures and societies.

Relocation and displacement over recent years have also led Agafonova to reflect deeply on homesickness and the meaning of "home." Her current series, Ethereal Memory, consists of cyanotype prints that function as echoes of fleeting yet deeply felt experiences from different periods of her life.

These works evoke memory as something both fragile and persistent, exploring longing, belonging, and the emotional landscape of return. Through layered imagery and the atmospheric qualities of cyanotype, Agafonova creates meditative spaces that invite viewers to reconsider ideas of place, identity, and emotional connection beyond geographic borders.

Terry MacDonald, Driven to Abstraction, 2020, Acrylic/Mixed Media, 20 x 20 x 1.5 in,

Terry MacDonald is an Anacortes artist. Her work has been described as "joyful art." Bright colors, whimsey and texture are employed in most paintings, whether they are the birds, wildlife or florals she is most well-known for, or the abstracts that feed her need to be free and expressive.

Rebecca Meloy, Flooding, 2026, acrylic, rag paper, collaged papers, 14 x 13 x 1.25 in,

Rebecca Meloy's visual voice is innately strong supporting the environment. Works from the 'Regenerative Energy: Water, Land, Trees, Sun' series are paintings that embrace priority habitats. Diversity of shorelines and lowlands create living environments for wildlife. In the Skagit County, many water loving birds. These moist havens are transition zones for communities, growing wild food, and providing protection for wildlife. Rebecca Meloy's land based art is influenced by her Scandinavian heritage from Finnish farmers, Swedish ministers, and pioneer Norwegians who emigrated and homestead in the Minnesota Boundary Waters. Born in the north woods she grew on a small Oregon farm. She has lived in Bellingham Washington for 46 years.

Sarah Banks, Babylon, 2015, Mixed Media Collage, 20 x 24 x in

Sarah Banks' work explores the visible and lingering effects of history on people, landscapes, and cultural memory. She is particularly interested in what she describes as "invisible cities and towns"-places shaped by conquest, empire, migration, labor, and decay, where layers of history accumulate over time. Her work considers how large historical forces continue to affect individuals and communities, from ancient civilizations to contemporary working lives.

Working across paper cut, printmaking-including serigraph, intaglio, and monotype-and painting, Banks combines observation, research, and material process to investigate these themes. Long periods of travel and artist residencies in Portugal, Spain, and Washington State have deeply informed her practice, providing both visual and historical points of departure. Sketches and studies developed during travel are later reexamined and expanded within her Seattle studio.

Banks is a member of Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle Print Arts, and Northwest Collage Society. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Pacific Northwest, Los Angeles, North Carolina, and Portugal, and is included in both public and private collections in the United States and abroad.

Abigail Drapkin, Nora at the Studio with Daffodils, 2024, Oil on canvas, 28 x 24 x 1.75 in

Interiority is both the setting and psychological terrain of Abigail Drapkin's paintings. Her figures press into corners, recline upside down, and wedge against one another within compressed domestic spaces that at times fracture into geometric planes. Rooted in lived experiences of womanhood and shaped by conversations with family, friends, and models, the work explores motherhood, caregiving, relationships, aging, and the quiet tensions of domestic life.

Drapkin often begins from direct observation, painting her subjects while in conversation with them, then continuing after they leave. Through layered marks and shifting structures of light and geometry, she searches for balance between observation and emotional memory. Books, seedlings, newspapers, thread, and other fragments of daily life become symbols of responsibility, intimacy, and the persistent noise of the outside world.

Influenced by Frantisek Kupka, Gustav Klimt, Pierre Bonnard, Edvard Munch, and Richard Diebenkorn, her paintings move between figuration and abstraction, dissolving bodies into patterned geometries and layered color. By painting herself and the women around her, Drapkin subverts the historical male gaze, replacing fantasy with lived experience, vulnerability, stillness, and emotional complexity.

Kate Rusek, Nothing is Required of You Here 4 (La Albiceleste), 2023, porcelain, industrial mineral glaze, palladium luster, 3 x 10 x 4 in

Kate Rusek's sculpture, installation, research, and writing examine the connective edges and dissonant intersections between humanity and the natural world. Rooted in Post-Natural Studies, her work engages materials and objects through complex processes in which the synthetic yields to organic fluidity.

Rusek forages history-laden excess from society to construct scenes that interrogate the binary between living and manufactured worlds, emphasizing somatic experience, craft, and deep time. Her current practice explores novel casting techniques to create vessels of accumulation, translating biomedical discards into porcelain micromarine-inspired organisms.

These works stitch together considerations of fertility, reproduction, and legacy across human and non-human kin. Working with clay, she captures forces of fluidity, water, and air, grounding the medium in its Earth-based origins. This deep-time orientation situates her practice within "old-growth thinking," where past, present, and future converge in intimate, handheld forms.

Ron Wigginton, Atmosphere, 2005, Co-polymer and metallic on honeycomb aluminum panel, 15 x 11 x 1 in

Ron Wigginton is a Fellow of the Morris Graves' Foundation where he painted the "Loleta"series (Solo Exhibition - Fresno Art Museum, and the "Washi" series (Solo Exhibition - Ugi, Japan). He earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and taught at Cornish School of Art, UC Berkeley and Davis and exhibited extensively in Portland and Seattle including representation by the Foster/White Gallery and in Japan. He lives and works between his studios near Yosemite and in Bellingham. His paintings are included in the Permanent Collections of the Seattle Art Museum, the Museum of Northwest Art, The Portland Art Museum, the Oakland Museum, and many Pacific Northwest private collections.

Jonelle Johnson, It's Gold, 2025, Monotype, 30 x 35 in

Jonelle Johnson's prints emerge in a space between intention and its dissolution, where process and chance shape the final image. Her printmaking practice embraces unpredictability, allowing for welcome surprises that arise through material interaction and layered decision-making.

At the heart of her work is an interest in how a two-dimensional surface can be disrupted to create a visceral sense of depth. A single brushstroke or mark can shift perception, suggesting dimensional space within a flat plane. Johnson explores this phenomenon through overlapping shapes, calligraphic gestures, and rhythmic accumulation of line.

In this way, her studio practice becomes a site of discovery, where control and accident coexist. The resulting works reflect the "magic of printmaking"-the moment when process reveals something unexpected, and meaning emerges through the tension between intention and absence.

Susan Cohen Thompson, Gathering at Sunset, 2022, ceramic, 8 x 11 x 1 in,

Thompson's imagery flows out of her perception that the Earth and Cosmos are alive with consciousness. Her softly calming and dreamlike style flows from her heart centered perspective of the living land that embraces life. In Thompson's cosmology, the birds are symbolic of a dream she had where 1000 birds flew out of her hands and traveled the globe whispering to humans how to be more Earth honoring. All the birds in Thompson's art are part of that thousand. The work hopes to evoke that feeling.

Peter de Lory, Upper Racehorse Creek Falls, Whatcom County, WA 2020, 2020, Photograph, archival pigment print, 21 x 26.5 x 1.75 in

Peter de Lory began making photographs of the landscape on Cape Cod at the age of sixteen. Growing up on a narrow spit of land surrounded by ocean anchored his early sense of place and attuned him to the relationship between land and water. Later, traveling west to study in San Francisco, he was struck by the scale and vastness of the American landscape.

Looking back, de Lory sees the evolution of his work as mirroring the environments and structures he has inhabited. He describes his approach as that of a "romantic structuralist," a term he coined to define a practice grounded in formal clarity and straightforward structure, which in turn allows space for emotional and interpretive openness.

His work consistently returns to the interplay between memory, myth, and lived reality-a tension well suited to the framing capacities of photography. Committed to a regional approach, de Lory understands his role as an intermediary between viewer and environment, re-representing place in a way that removes it from the everyday and opens it to layered meaning.

Alida Latham, Salt Evaporation Pond Walvis Bay Namibia. Purchased 2013, Photograph
26"H x 37"W x 1" framed

Alida Latham is a Seattle based photographer who travels the world documenting the culture, wildlife, and environment she sees. Her work has been shown at Honeychurch Antiques in Seattle and has been published in National Geographic.

Arthur S. Aubry, Switchbox @ King County Airport 1/6, unknown date, C print photography
28 1/2" H x 28 1/2" W x 3/4"deep

Arthur Aubry photographs details from industrial landscapes around the Northwest with great formal control and grace. He has exhibited locally at such venues as Esther Claypool Gallery, Linda Cannon Gallery, and more recently at University of Puget Sound and Arizona State University. His work is included in the permanent collections of Seattle Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery, and the Microsoft Art Collection among others. Aubry runs his own commercial studio business in addition to his work as a fine artist. He has begun a relationship with the Gitterman Gallery in New York and has an upcoming show there in late 2006.

Richard Longstreet, 2025 06, 2025, Oil painting on board, 36 x 24 x 2 in

Richard Longstreet has been learning and teaching art for over sixty years. While he has accumulated degrees and credentials, his primary sources of learning have been individual artists he has encountered or worked with-whether briefly or over extended periods-as well as every student he has ever known.

He believes that art is, beyond any decorative or polemical function, a synthesis of all that is felt or known, however contradictory. His work is grounded in an interest in the pre-conscious layering and juxtaposition of diverse impressions in the formation of meaning.

Longstreet describes his practice as a form of "conscious dreaming," intended to engage the viewer's own deeper perception.

Lisa Daniel, Strength of a Samurai, 2025, Acrylic, fiberglass & glass beads on panel, 30 x 30 x 2 in

Lisa Daniel creates large-scale mixed-media abstract paintings through the pouring, directing, and manipulation of layered materials including fluid acrylics, gels, paper, fabric, and other elements applied to canvas. Her work explores the interplay of color, texture, depth, and transparency, inviting viewers into intricate surfaces where forms continually emerge and shift.

Each piece begins with a considered composition and palette. Her process is intentional and methodical: multiple canvases are placed on the floor, and paint is poured from above, guided by tilting surfaces and wedges that control movement. Layer by layer, the work evolves through a process that demands patience, precision, and sustained attention.

At the same time, the drying process introduces unpredictability. While waiting for layers to set can be challenging, Daniel often responds to the temptation to intervene mid-process, allowing disruption and spontaneity to reshape the work. These interventions can transform the surface, generating unexpected textures and forms.

Her practice is defined by the tension between control and chaos, and by the ongoing search for moments when the surface resolves into something compelling and alive.

Bruce Hall, Glove Stories, 2004, Photos, 40 x 200 x 1 in, Photos of lost gloves. In-situ. Framed and artfully presented

Glove Stories began after Bruce Hall's wife pointed out a few lost gloves lying unnoticed along the street. Once he began noticing them, he saw them everywhere. What started as curiosity became an obsession. Hall photographs lost gloves exactly as he finds them - never moved, arranged, or staged.

The collection has grown into an archive of nearly 2,000 images documenting these overlooked objects and the quiet human presence they suggest. A child's mitten in the rain, a worn work glove on gravel, or a single leather glove in snow each hints at an untold story.

From this archive, 120 photographs have been framed and artfully presented in public exhibitions. Displayed together, the images transform ordinary discarded objects into a study of repetition, chance, absence, and memory.

Glove Stories invites viewers to slow down and reconsider the unnoticed details embedded within everyday life.

Kathy Roseth, Wheel Bound, 2023, Oil on Canvas, 24 x 18 x 1 in

Wheelbound combines imagery of the traditional "Storm at Sea" quilting pattern with the familiar sight of Canada geese, stepping their way through colorful triangles, their curving backs mirroring the straight/curved lines of the pattern, enmeshing them. Roseth has long been fascinated by the austere power of traditional Amish quilts, having spent the first twenty years of her artistic production as an avid quilter exploring how simple geometric patterns establish a framework through which fantastic color progressions and color effects are possible.

Jennifer Frohwerk, Garden Window, 2016, oil on canvas, 28 x 36 x 2 in

Jennifer Frohwerk studied abroad in Italy after completing her university degree. While in Florence, she took a drawing class in which she sketched the interior of the Chiesa Santo Spirito, sitting cross-legged on the stone floor with her drawing board in her lap. During a critique, her professor encouraged her to move beyond ornate detail and instead consider how to draw the space contained by the architecture-how to depict the air itself and the filtered light.

This idea became formative in her practice: how to represent not only objects, but atmosphere, movement, and the sense of awe within a space. She continues this inquiry in Seattle through en plein air drawing and painting, working outdoors to capture architectural forms in neighborhoods such as Queen Anne and Capitol Hill. Indoors, she studies windows, curtains, and the shifting boundary between interior and exterior worlds.

She also revisits childhood slides as a source of inspiration, drawing on contemplative images shaped by early experiences of reading, observation, and imagination.

Don Wesley, Bald Starling, 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 x 1.5 in

Don Wesley's practice has been shaped profoundly by teachers, mentorship, and education. He describes educators as central to both his development as an artist and his broader personal growth, offering guidance, support, and formative direction.

While studying art at Western Washington University in the mid-1990s, Wesley worked closely with painting professor and mentor Ed Bereal, who emphasized the idea that art can function as a "lever for change," a principle that continues to inform his work. Another professor, Margery Amdur, introduced him to the use of non-art materials and techniques for making acrylics behave like oils through mediums and suspensions. His study of dance under Nolan Dennett also informs his understanding of movement and the depiction of physical gesture in his work.

Wesley is an artist and teacher living and working in Skagit County, with studios in Day Creek and La Conner. His engagement with nature began after arriving in Washington State from Ohio in 1989 while serving in the U.S. Army at Fort Lewis. After completing his service, he earned a degree from Western Washington University in 1995 with portfolios in painting, illustration, and graphic design. In 2025, he completed the Washington State Arts Commission's Teaching Artist Training Lab (TATLab) and now teaches art for grades K-12 throughout Skagit County through the Museum of Northwest Art's Creative Connections program.

Kate Oltmann, Eagle with Bull Elk, 2026, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 x 2 in

Kate Oltmannt lives and works in rural Northwest Montana, on land where her family homesteaded and built structures in Glacier National Park. Her work is rooted in land, labor, lineage, and the traditions that have shaped-and continue to shape-the American West.

Working in cyanotype and oil paint, she integrates quilt patterns passed down through generations. Often dismissed as "craft" due to their association with women's work, these patterns become a central visual language in her paintings. They function as echoes of the women whose labor built and sustained the West, even as their stories remain largely unrecorded.

Oltmannt is interested in depicting the West as it exists now, where tradition is not a relic but a living practice carried forward by families and communities. Her paintings operate as both record and reflection, honoring the quiet labor of women while examining contemporary life through pattern, gesture, and material grit.

Laura Lasworth, Natural & Grafted Branches, 2010, Oil on wood panel, 12 x 12 x 1 in

Laura Lasworth received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA from California Institute of the Arts. Since her first solo show in 1981, she has consistently exhibited her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Her work has been featured in publications such as Art in America, Artforum, the Los Angeles Times, and the Huffington Post. Lasworth was born and raised in Chicago, IL. After many years living in Los Angeles, she relocated to Seattle, Washington, in 2002, where she currently resides.

Laura Lasworth is a painter who's known for her use of sophisticated literary, philosophical, and personal symbolism. In her elaborate cycles of paintings, her method is like a long form writer where each cycle functions as a chapter, from which a continuing narrative emerges. Across the decades, laden trees, stormy skies, lace cloths, and broken branches have become familiar motifs of her personal vocabulary. In her solo shows, viewers encountered imagined interiors, symbolic still-lifes, and various landscapes that feature ever-changing weather patterns over mythical fields where admired persons may make an appearance, or absent fathers and missing children return. Through her art, she aims to provide viewers with a respite in a space that reflects our common humanity, away from the unjust, complex, and complicated world we find ourselves in today.

Valeriya Bugatti, Fairy, 2016, acrylics paint on Canvas, 24 x 18 x in

Valeriya Bugatti's work is a process of devotion measured not in hours, but in depth. Each piece begins with research into history, culture, textiles, movement, and symbolism, approached with a commitment to authenticity, respect, and precision. She spends extensive time constructing not only an image, but a layered narrative that develops gradually over time.

This body of work explores identity, feminine strength, and ancestral memory, engaging the tension between historical reality and contemporary interpretation. Rather than replication, her goal is resonance-creating work that feels emotionally and materially truthful even when reimagined.

Texture, composition, and detail are central to her process. Each artwork is treated as a living environment in which clothing, gesture, and atmosphere carry meaning and contribute to the narrative. The intention is to evoke presence rather than simply produce an image.

Still in the ongoing process of artistic development, Bugatti views each finished work as a point of departure for further research and refinement. Her practice is understood as evolving, with the aim of inviting viewers into that evolution. If her work sparks recognition, curiosity, or emotion, she considers it to have fulfilled its purpose.

Robert Matinjussi, Basket of Shadows, 2026, Tempera, 24 x 18 in

Robert Matinjussi is a deeply observant artist who sees the world through a lens of detail and subtlety. For him, painting is not about solving problems or adhering to formulas, but about capturing the essence of an image.

He understands style as something akin to handwriting-distinct, personal, and reflective of individuality. Each mark or stroke carries a sense of personal perspective, shaped by how he perceives the world rather than by prescribed rules or prevailing trends.

For Matinjussi, observation becomes an intimate act of translation, where what is seen is filtered through perception and re-expressed as personal vision.

Mark Larson, Out of the Office, 2025, Oil on panel, 30 x 48 x 1.5 in

Mark Larson's work explores the meeting place between external landscapes and the inner lives we carry into them. He is drawn to the sublime landscapes and architecture of Italy, the high ridges and deserts of the American West, old-growth forests, and the thundering beaches of the Pacific Coast-not only as scenery, but as repositories for memory, grief, and gratitude.

Working as an oil painter, Larson builds images that function as thresholds, existing between the real and the symbolic. Architectural fragments, mythical animals, and manmade objects appear alongside recognizable natural landscapes, creating spaces where dream and reality intersect. In works such as Out of the Office, a computer desk is placed within a thundering surf, reflecting on the fragility of human endeavor in relation to the power of nature.

Ultimately, his work invites viewers to consider their own crossings: the people they have loved, the places that have shaped them, and how lived experience transforms landscapes into something sacred and personally resonant.

Kelsey Fernkopf and Steve Gilbert, Magic Meadow, 2025, Archival pigment print, wood frame with a plywood backer under museum glass, 60 x 84 x 180 in

Kelsey Fernkopf is a visual artist who creates site-responsive light installations using luminous neon glass tubing. Drawing on more than three decades of experience fabricating neon, he places geometric neon forms in forests, open landscapes, and urban environments. Situated in unexpected surroundings, his site-responsive work reveals each location through immersive, radiant forms that echo architectural fragments and operate as symbolic markers. Encountered in the wild, these installations are both phenomenological and threshold-like: ephemeral points of arrival that alter perception and soften the distinction between here and there, between nature and the neon element itself.

Steve Gilbert translates these transient installations into digital archival pigment prints. His photographic sensitivity captures the sculptural and spatial qualities of the work, as well as the unique luminosity of neon. His images are not simply documents, but extensions of the work itself. His photographs hold the tension between presence and disappearing, capturing moments where luminescent form and environment briefly converge. They suggest temporal openings to other worlds, preserving the experiential threshold while transforming it into a lasting contemplative form.

Cie Goulet, August Day, 1989, Monoprint, 26" x 37.5'' x 1.5"

Cie Goulet is an American contemporary artist known for her rich, vibrant monotype prints and oil paintings of warm landscapes, particularly the vineyards and oak groves of the Pacific Northwest and California

Scott Sueme, A Rare Spruce, 2019, Acrylic on panel, 36 in. X 36 in. X 1 in.

Scott Sueme is a contemporary Canadian artist known for his hard-edge abstract paintings and assemblages that explore the interplay of color, geometry, and texture. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Sueme transitioned from a background in graffiti and graphic design to focus full-time on fine art. His practice bridges digital composition with hands-on, meticulous craftsmanship.

Terry Furchgott, Untitled, 1986-1987, Pastel over watercolor, 28.5 x 38.25

Terry Furchgott has made art her career and her passion for over fifty years. She is represented by the Harris Harvey Gallery in Seattle, WA. Working primarily in acrylic and soft pastel, her paintings focus on the figure and are notable for their depth of color, strong, innovative compositions and exploration of archetypal human relationships and of the Feminine. Furchgott received an honors degree in art history from Radcliffe College and studied classical drawing and painting at the Camden Arts Center, London. She brings a broad understanding of art history, seasoned practical experience, a continuing creative excitement and a questioning mind both to her creative process and to her work as a teacher.

Furchgott has been the recipient of Individual Artist Awards and Fellowships from the Washington State Arts Commission, the King County Arts Commission and Artist Trust. Along with her studio work she has also pursued a successful career in public art, completing large-scale commissions for the Seattle Center House, the Kent Regional Justice Center, the United States Post Office, the Regional Arts and Culture Council of Portland, the Fairbanks School District, Olympia High School and the Washington State Arts Commission among others. A community activist, Furchgott has used her talents as an artist to design and coordinate several key community projects including the Art to the People Project, a multidisciplinary arts celebration of Seattle's African Americans, and The First Street Artist's Collective, an ongoing mentoring and critique group for emerging and established Seattle artists.

She is represented in key Northwest collections and her work can be viewed at the Microsoft Corporation, the WA Sate Arts Commission, the Seattle Center, Virginia Mason Medical Center, the UW Medical Center, Continental Bank, McDonald's Corporation, Providence Hospital, Group Health, Federal Home Loan Bank, and the United States Postal Service.

Janie Ackerman, Ancient Lore, 2014, Oil on canvas, 30 x 24, 32 x 26 framed

Janie Ackerman is a Skagit Valley artist who began painting with oils in 1994, receiving formal training in the Russian impressionist style. She currently works in oil, acrylic, and collage, frequently applying multiple layers of paint, which are then rubbed away to reveal a time worn essence.

Charles Stavig, Art 101, 2007, Mixed Media, 32.5" x 19"

Charles "Chuck" Inar Stavig was a multi-talented Pacific Northwest artist, educator, and building designer deeply embedded in the arts community of Washington's Skagit Valley and surrounding regions.