Arts & Entertainment

New Exhibit in Sammamish Commons Celebrates Trees

A collective of four Seattle-area artists are displaying their 'Trees in Art' exhibit in the city hall gallery until March 8.

You can see your forest and the trees, too, if you visit the Sammamish Commons Gallery in the between now and March.

A new art exhibit was hung this week, featuring the work of four Seattle area artists who comprise a group that together focus on Trees in Art.

The new exhibit at the Commons is called “Tribute to Trees,” and is an installation of about 40 pieces by artists Jacqui Beck, Donna Leavitt, Cheryl A. Richey, and Elizabeth Reed Smith. The artists joined together as a collective in 2009 after meeting each other through the Women Painters of Washington organization.

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They’ve found inspiration in talking together and focusing on the theme, Beck says.

“One of the things that’s really important to us is stewardship of the earth,” she says.

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Though they come together around a general theme of trees for the collective shows (several of them also paint other subjects outside the collective), each artist’s work is unique and among them they complete a spectrum of highly representational to abstract work. Many of the pieces also are for sale, ranging in price from around $200 to over $4,000.

“We come with an agenda in addition to our artistic pursuits, but we are not speaking in unison; we are four distinct styles,” Richey says. They also all bring different background experiences. Richey was in social work and academia and became a fulltime painter after retiring from the University of Washington; Beck is an art instructor; and they rely on Smith and Leavitt’s knowledge of botany and tree identification, they say.

Beck and Richey, both of Seattle, paint in acrylics but with unique styles. Richey’s work leans to the abstract and she says she paints “tree spirits.” Beck, who often teaches workshops around the area at organizations such artEast in Issaquah, says her work is influenced by the work of the Impressionists.

Smith, originally from England, lives on the Washington peninsula in Indianola and works in mixed media, pen and ink, and drypoint engravings. She is the most representational artist in the group, Richey says, working in fine detail and often smaller sizes than the others.

Leavitt, who lives in Edmonds, works in dry media, colored pencil, and graphite, and she developed her multipanel drawing  method—her works are comprised of numerous 8 ½” by 11” sheets loosely attached to each other and the wall—while working in the Peace Corps in Macedonia.

“I had to devise a way to take everything home with me in a suitcase,” she says. “I’ve continued to work in that fashion.”

Beck says the group works well together because they respect and inspire each other.

“My inspiration comes from these three women that I love, and our mutual celebration of trees,” Beck says.

Richey says the ultimate aim of the show is to stimulate people to contemplate “the dual emphasis of both the beauty of trees and their absolute necessity.”

Leavitt says having a sort of tree focus as an artist has definitely accomplished in everyday ways one of the group’s goals of bringing awareness and conscious thought to all types of issues, social, environmental, and otherwise surrounding trees.

“Everyone who knows me now is looking at trees, and to me that is the greatest gift,” Leavitt says.


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