Penn Cove Gallery
Whidbey Island's Favorite Art Gallery for over 25 Years
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Our Featured Artist for June is Woodturner, Jim Short

6/1/2023

 
​Wood has been essential to civilization and its utility and beauty still calls to many of us. Jim rescues pieces of trees here on Whidbey Island and are a record of climate and time. As a carpenter he has always hoarded wood and counted tree rings. Forms are developed on the lathe from green wood, most are allowed to dry then returned to round and sanded. Other pieces are turned to a finished thickness, smoothed with hand scrapers, and allowed to dry and distort. All finishes are food safe using tung or walnut oil and sometimes wax. Jim offers functional bowls however his interests tend toward the useless, cracked, wrinkled, and decayed. His goal is to always celebrate treeness.
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May Featured Artist - Janis Collins

5/1/2023

 
Janis began her love of drawing in early grade school. Her parents supplied her with blank paper and a "big box" of crayons. This allowed her to use her imagination to create pictures with lots of color. She was hooked on drawing and expressing herself in art.
 
She experimented with mixing colors. Around the age of eight she experimented with a box of food coloring and 8 to 10 glasses of clear water. She was absolutely amazed by what happened when she mixed blue and yellow: presto! green! It was magic... and the possibilities were endless.
 
For years she dabbled in watercolors, fascinated by the effects of mixing colors and what the paper could do with a little imagination. Then one day she decided to try colored pencils. She could still mix
colors, the process was much more predictable, correcting errors was much easier, and she could incorporate more detail in her art. Now she is "hooked" on pencils and enjoy drawing even more.
 
With her studio overlooking Penn Cove and Coupeville she particularly enjoys creating drawings based on the endless patterns, colors, and the variety of shapes found in nature. Each drawing takes many hours and layers of color, but she enjoy the process. Janis hopes you enjoy her work as much as she enjoys creating it!
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April Featured Artist - Richard Nash

3/27/2023

 
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The art museums and architecture in culture rich cities such as New York City, Paris, London, Leningrad, Istanbul, and Lisbon to mention a few, plus a one year scholarship to study art in Japan and a one year sabbatical to study architecture and art for the purpose of creating an art history resource for my teaching endeavors for the Oak Harbor School District, have all enriched my work as an artist.
 
All this mixed in with my MFA studies at WSU have provided the tools I use to create my own fine art regardless of the medium. The visual arts are so much more than simply picking up a brush or chisel. For all well made art, the foundation for creating enduring work requires a solid understanding of composition and design. Without it, the work may survive as a statement, but it is unlikely to have the enduring impact of a well composed work of art. Whether my subject matter is a non-representational painting, a botanical rendering or if it is sculpture, the essence of the work is in its composition.
 
For example, most of my botanicals are from real life. They are carefully arranged in a vase (the flowers are kept in the refrigerator between painting sessions for 4-5 days). The museum board is prepared with gesso using a small roller, which leaves a finely textured surface. A lightly drawn pencil line frames the area for the painting. Upon drying, it is lightly sanded to leave very fine "pores".
 
It is from this point that the compositional elements become primary to the process. The negative spaces between the leaves, the stems, the vase, the bloom, the edge of the frame are all carefully laid out with acrylics, no pencil. The layered pigments are added and then partially removed. The pores hold on to some of the color. The next layer with another color is added and removed, then another and another until as many as 15 thin coats have been added. This provides "depth" and richness. Critical to the design is being deliberate in the choices made while being prepared to incorporate the more spontaneous elements of the process. The way lines vary, the way shapes relate to each other, the overall location inside the frame, and the use of value in the color gradients all add to the success of the composition. 

Wood Hyacinth, above, and below, Ethereal1 ​by Richard Nash 
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Guest Artist January2023, Sean Moore

12/28/2022

 
Penn Cove Gallery welcomes photographer Sean Moore as our newest Guest Artist.

Sean's artistic sense strives to capture the spirit of the subject and moment. These then diverge into different tracks: Large Format Film and 8x10 and Digital. The large format film projects are used to convey his more abstract ideas related to the impermanence of life as seen through concepts of permanence. Digital work takes on wildlife imagery, looking for those strange and odd critter behaviors.
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All that said, Sean is not beyond capturing an image that just speaks to him if for no discernable reason than he likes it. 
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Young Anna's Learning to Fly by Sean Moore

January 2023 - New Gallery Member Ivy Breen

12/28/2022

 
Welcome Ivy!
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Ivy found her way under the wharf at a very low tide to complete a plein air pastel of the underside of the walkway, highlighting the piers, which are set to be replaced.  Although long overdue, they served their purpose for many years and she wanted to capture that before they were replaced.      
      
Ivy usually starts with a vivid underpainting of pastels applied, as seen in the first photo below, left, that is  wetted down with mineral spirits. When pastels are wetted down they revert to wet paint and you use a brush to manipulate it just like watercolor, but when it dries, it turns back into a chalk like dry medium.  Then you use pastel sticks to work over this base for the finished look as in the second photo below right.  
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Penn Cove Gallery is located on the Coupeville Historic Waterfront.  Coupeville, the second-oldest town in Washington,
is the heart of 
Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve, the nation's first, on scenic Whidbey Island.
If you are coming from the south take the Mukilteo/Clinton ferry; 
from the west the Port Townsend/Coupeville ferry; from the north drive over the Deception Pass Bridge.



Our ADA compliant gallery offers street-level access via the Grace Street entrance
and one public handicapped parking space on Front Street .
All artwork on this site is subject to prior sale. The creators of all content and images hold copyright to their respective work. All rights reserved 2023