Join friends, neighbors and artists to see what galleries are featuring this month during the First Saturday Gallery Walk on Feb. 2. Doors are open and refreshments offered from 5:30 to 8 p.m., unless otherwise noted.

Simon Mace Gallery goes to the ‘Critters!’

The Simon Mace Gallery reopens on Saturday, Feb. 2, with “Critters!” featuring the works of Jaime Ellsworth, Susan Melrath, Cheri O’Brien and Thomas Rude.

Ellsworth, of the San Juan Islands, exhibits her intriguing pet paintings in oil, inviting the viewer to “first look at the simplicity of the image, then beyond, opening a door to the imagination.”

Redmond painter Melrath celebrates life as she weaves patterns through layers of color. In this exhibit, she creates mood through puzzling shapes and compositions of people and dogs.

O’Brien is inspired to find humor in beauty and the beauty of humor. Her “Misbehaving Hound Dogs” appear in two and three dimensions. O’Brien is the recipient of numerous public art commissions and awards, including Snohomish County Artist of the Year.

Rude brings his alchemy of invention to “Critters!” Whimsy and curiosity surround his wood sculptures. Featured on television and in national publications, Rude, along with Ellsworth, are among several of the gallery’s artists distinguished by inclusion in the book 100 Northwest Artists by E. Ashley Rooney, due out sometime this year.

A portion of the sale price of all “Critters!” artwork purchased in February and March will be donated to local nonprofit programs benefiting animal welfare.

“Critters!” is a two-month show (Feb. 2-April 1) designed to celebrate our furry friends and chase away the winter doldrums. 

Tail-waggers are welcome during Gallery Walk.

For more information, contact the gallery, 236 Taylor St., at 385-4433 or simonmacegallery.com.

PT Gallery explores the deep blue sea

Port Townsend Gallery features new works by Sylvia White and Diane Holmes that explore the sea and its creatures.

White is merging her unique talents of weaving, painting and the incorporation of found objects to create fanciful sculpture from the lowly gourd. In her featured assemblage, “Deep Blue,” she combines copper, kelp and other sea life into a beautiful, one-of-a-kind piece of art.

Holmes is a self-taught watercolorist who is constantly inspired by the array of incredible subject material available. She has recently been combining acrylic ink and watercolor paints on canvas with resin poured over it. The pouring of resin over the painting gives the piece more motion, such as the koi in many of her works that appear to be swimming. She hopes that visitors enjoy her “Peace Gathering,” which showcases this fascinating technique.

Meet the featured artists during Gallery Walk at the Port Townsend Gallery, 715 Water St. 

For more gallery information, call 379-8110 or visit porttownsendgallery.com.

Experience Marie Delaney at Gallery Nine

Artist Marie Delaney presents her new work in an exhibit titled “Landscape of the Mind” at Gallery Nine.

Featured is “Courage and the Tenth Gate,” an oil painting that represents the culmination of Delaney’s work with this theme. The show series consists of nine canvases, each portraying a facet within the maze of the human psyche, with titles such as “Intuition,” “Obsession” and “Incorrigible Mind.” The average size of these captivating paintings is 2 by 3 feet, and two are 6-foot-high verticals.

Delaney says she believes these intriguing works are at once both intricate and far-reaching, and act as a conduit wherein viewers may identify their own experiences within the imagery, creating a communication bond between our deeper selves. The paintings pulse with beauty, danger, mystery and hope.

Meet the artist during Gallery Walk at Gallery Nine, 1012 Water St.

For more information, call 379-8881 or visit gallery-9.com.

Spend a ‘Night on Earth’ with Red Raven Gallery

Originally inspired by the Campbell McGrath poem “Nights on Planet Earth,” Counsel Langley exhibits her recent series of works – created with acrylic paint, graphite and ink, as well as generous amounts of glitter, paper and various recycled materials – at the Red Raven Gallery in February.

The series reflects moments of awareness in which so much is happening all at once; tigers and happy hour exist on the same planet; Jupiter and Twinkies share a solar system.

“I find these times of hyperawareness powerfully beautiful, disturbing, comforting, overwhelming, enlightening and unpredictable,” Langley says.

As a part of her larger body of work, these paintings are hybrids of two opposing approaches. One – loose painting techniques – uses drips, pours and splatters, which effectively represent natural elements: weather, water, clouds and smoke. With the other approach – using pen and ink with architect’s tools (templates and compasses) – she fastidiously draws controlled lines, concentric circles, grids and repetitive dots, using these to reflect structures and infrastructures that humans build.

“I am influenced by the look of outer space, computer chips, dramatic weather, electric circuits, decay, rock ’n’ roll glamour, plans and diagrams, B-rated sci-fi control panels, urban environments, fluid turbulence, engineering schematics and architectural drawings,” she says.

Meet the artist during Gallery Walk at the Red Raven Gallery, 922 Water St.

For more information, call 385-1493 or visit redravengallery.com.

Theresa Stirling, a Northwest native and encaustic painter, is proud to call the Olympic Peninsula home. Fifteen years ago, she was living in Seattle, immersed in life’s fast lane: involved in a full career in the biotech industry, and traveling to all points on the map. Today, she lives on the sleepy, quiet shores of the Hood Canal, toggling between running the health-care business she owns with her husband, being a very involved mother of two young children and managing an encaustic-art career that’s taking wing.

Stirling’s childhood was steeped in nature, and the natural world features prominently in her photo-encaustic collections. Her work ranges from small to large scale, and begins with a photographic image she manipulates with software. Beeswax is layered onto the image, sometimes with 30 or more layers of natural resin and pigment, each brushstroke fused with a blowtorch. The result is a sculptural painting. The process takes much time, uses humble tools of all sorts and is physically demanding.

“Working and stretching across large, horizontal pieces can be fatiguing, but worthwhile,” Stirling says. “While encaustic painting is ancient, from 2,500 years ago with the Greeks sealing boat hulls, what is new are the application possibilities – everything ranging from textiles, ceramics, stoneware to innovative three-dimensional works. The possibilities are endless.”

With a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Washington, Stirling continues to take art intensives through Pratt Fine Arts in Seattle.

Meet the artist and view her exhibit “All that Glitters Is Molten Wax” at Artisans on Taylor, 911 Water St., during Gallery Walk.

For more information, call 379-1029 or visit artisansontaylor.com.

Meet painter Caecilia Fryrear at the Wine Seller

Caecilia Fryrear has been painting for more than 30 years. Born in the Netherlands, she immigrated to Vancouver, B.C., when she was 14. As a young woman, she moved to the U.S. and studied oil painting in Texas, under the Dutch-born artist Jan Maters, and acrylics under American artist Doug Sweet. 

During that time, she also reared three children and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the creative arts. Having lived in California and Texas for many years, Fryrear returned to the Northwest 10 years ago and now calls Port Townsend her home.

Fryrear has shown her art in many parts of the world, including Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and the U.S. She has been featured in the Houston Chronicle, The Galveston County Daily News and Peninsula Daily News. Twenty of her paintings were featured in the book Kreativität: Das dritte therapeutische Prinzip in der Psychiatrie in 2002.

Meet the artist and see her latest works at the Wine Seller, 1010 Water St., during Gallery Walk.

For more information, contact Fryrear at 385-1214 or cjfryrear@olypen.com.  

Daily Bird Pottery re-creates space

After taking time off in January – to reorganize their studio inside Flagship Landing, 1011 Water St., to better accommodate the new team members and relocate the sculpture studio – the owners of Daily Bird Pottery, Phoebe and Darby Huffman, have it back in full swing.

In February, the Huffmans join forces with Kim Brooks and Christine Hulburt. Brooks is responsible for joining handles to mugs and adding the extra little details, while Hulburt is hard at work at the wheel, Phoebe sculpts, and Darby throws a variety of baking wares.

During Gallery Walk, come by to meet the team and check out the newly rearranged space.

Learn more at dailybirdpottery.com.

Feed the fire at the Max Grover Gallery

This month at the Max Grover Gallery, Linda Okazaki’s haunting “Night Visitor” exhibit is succeeded by “Fire Inside the Heart.”

A visionary artist, Okazaki continues to extend her unique exploration of internal history. In these strikingly beautiful paintings and prints, reverie and dream life are the keys to eros and the transcendent self. Rich in technical and thematic innovation, Okazaki’s work – always open to interpretation and discovery – is composed of arrested and arresting happenings.

Informed by a uniquely modern consciousness, “Fire Inside the Heart” provides a glimpse into an ongoing complex and exemplary journey. Rich in color, texture and unprecedented imagery, as well as the emblematic creatures, land, sky and waterscapes of the Pacific Northwest, Okazaki’s work escapes boundaries or easy categorization.

The Max Grover Gallery is located at 630 Water St., where it shares a space with Sideshow Variety.

Figures take shape at Northwind Arts Center

In February, Northwind Arts Center, 2409 Jefferson St., presents the sculpture and drawings of Maitland Hardyman and Rita Kepner, and the paintings and drawings of Elizabeth Jameson. “The Figure” opened on Jan. 18 and continues through Feb. 24.

For more information, call 379-1086 or visit northwindarts.org.

JoAnne Heron on display at the Bishop

JoAnne Heron’s solo show continues at the Bishop Victorian Hotel, 714 Washington St., through February.

The pastel and watercolor artist displays paintings of local and regional subjects in the exhibit, which opened in January.

For more information, email blueheron65@hotmail.com.

Bainbridge Arts and Crafts features local artists

This month, the “Mixed Nuts: Super Heroes We’d Like to See” show invites artists to reveal their inner superheroes.

Shane Miller of Port Townsend, and Joan Peter and Laurie Lewis of Port Ludlow, along with other regional artists, repaired to their sanctuaries, hauled out their special gadgets and demonstrated that superheroes aren’t just crime fighters and warriors of justice.

The Bainbridge Arts and Crafts Gallery, 151 Winslow Way E., Bainbridge Island, is awash with these imaginings from Feb. 1 to Feb. 25.

For more information, call 206-842-3132 or visit bacart.org.