Moments of reflection and exploration are being offered in a new art show by a local painter.

“Musings,” an exhibit of recent acrylics from Port Townsend-based painter and hair stylist David James Bellecci, continues through Saturday, Dec. 31 at Uptown Dental Clinic in Port Townsend.

The show is open to the public for viewing from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

Bellecci first turned to art to fill a hole in his life, one on a recently renovated wall.

“I had just renovated a studio that I was going to be using as a voice studio and I had a wall that needed a big piece of art and I didn’t have the money to buy it,” Bellecci said.

At first, he thought he might get a deal on a piece from an artist friend. Instead, he got advice on how to make his own.

Bellecci’s initial success was seen by his sister, and she had him create another piece after she completed her own home renovation.

From there, he couldn’t be stopped.

While these first forays in painting started later in his life, Bellecci has always had a creative drive with a career as a singer as well as years of ballet, all while supporting himself financially as a hair designer.

“I started as a singer and needed to make money to finance my way through school,” Bellecci said of how he first got into the hair game.

In Bellecci’s new collection, representational and abstract art forms find common ground in the beauty of the natural world.

One of the major inspirations for the work was a trip to Paris he took with his husband to celebrate his 60th birthday.

“It was a revelation to see so many masterpieces up close. I fell in love with the beauty that the great painters caught on canvas. Upon our return, I enjoyed a wonderful escape from the pandemic by painting pieces that hark back to the impressionist era,” Bellecci wrote in a press release for the show.

Two of the great impressionist works, Monet’s “Road to Chailly” and Van Gogh’s “Irises,” directly inspired some of the works with Bellicci’s own interpretations found in this collection.

In a striking contrast to the representational forms, his abstract work displays an expansive creativity.

“There was so much more than meets the eye when you really start studying it and that’s what I’ve found out since,” Bellecci said of his journey into the abstract.

A newcomer to the form, he’s since learned that the abstract masters had a depth of study in classical styles before turning in the other direction.

“I’m not trained, I don’t have that background,” Bellecci said. “It makes it a little more like I’m floundering out in the middle of the sea.”

These splashes have a style all their own, with Bellecci describing them “as pure exploration — play with color and patterns.”