Brushes with Nature: Juliet Shen / Po-Yan Tsang

Two-person exhibition: Seattle-based Juliet Shen infuses her brushstrokes with energy. Her main source of inspiration and renewal has always been the natural landscape. She sees the constant transformations taking place in nature mirroring our own spiritual and creative life in similar flux. She paints forests, wetlands, wild rivers, and tidal currents in a semi-abstract style that relies on fine brushwork. Her work is always infused with a sense of place, recognizable or fantastical.

Po-Yan Tsang is a Seattle contemporary representational painter aware of both natural beauty and environmental destruction. Inspired by ocean scenes and landscapes, Tsang is quick to find human debris amidst the beauty. Her works start from direct observation, through plein air painting, still life setups, or reference sketches and photos she takes herself. She captures a mood around a scene: the feeling of sunshine in the forest, a discarded plastic bag, a glacier we know to be subject to melting.