Misty-eyed landscapes. Chromatic filaments on a final curtain call. A love affair with the darkness oblivion brings. Metallic curves and lines reaching, outward-bound, for meaning.

Welcome to art in Edmonds.

March kicks off a splendid array of exhibits, big and small, to admire from afar or make your very own.

Art Walk Edmonds falls on St. Patrick’s Day, 5 p.m.-8 p.m., this year, connecting fine local artists with art lovers, thanks to the generosity of the town’s host merchants. More reason to celebrate!

Can’t make AWE? Art View Edmonds allows you to check out all the art during regular business hours — all month long.

Diversity is the order of the day. The March artists cover a wide gamut of media and styles: Julie Roehling’s cute, quirky animation, suitable for framing or a custom wedding — Edmonds Vision Center, Natalie Colobong’s prismatic, zen-tangle doodles, far from simple or basic — Windermere Real Estate, Diana Grant and the abstract treasures that seem to shine and tear and unfold from ancient cerebral hieroglyphics — crow, and Mason Fraker’s painstaking work bringing miniature gaming models to life with a little paint and fantasy — ArtSpot.

Cole Gallery’s March exhibit features the “Tonal Beauty” of Michael Orwick and Jeff White’s “Majestic Vision.” Both artists capture moments in time, impressions of a greater world beyond one’s own backyard.

Orwick’s world is always awash with the warm, yet fading glow of what feels like the last sunset on the last day on earth. Shadowy, brush-stroke trees stand as sentinels, like doors left slightly ajar, as a crooked dirt road — poetically left of center — meanders toward the dim-lit horizon (“The Road Between”). Cottony cattails take on another look, one borrowing from the age of wisdom, as twilight casts a ghostly shimmer (“Upon The Wind”).

“As a painter, the effects of light and atmosphere are what I remember about a location and what inspires me most. Light transforms the ordinary or even beautiful into the exceptional. My quest is to capture these fleeting moments and help people see things again through new eyes [Cole Gallery website].”

Atmospheric landscapes alluding to the melancholy of finite mortality, and all the beauty on that withering vine, characterize White’s enchanted paradise lost — right here in the Pacific Northwest or in some far-off land. His night skies, burnished by wind, rain, and a touch of the endless sea (“Night Swell,” “Moon Storm,” “A Sense Of Silence”) are some of his strongest works, merely hinting at the compelling side of devastating oblivion.

You’ll want to meet White personally at Art Walk Edmonds this month.

Gallery North’s juried Small Works Show returns after last March’s cancellation due to the pandemic, giving artists from all over a chance to shine within the framework of fewer than 154 square inches, in drawing and paint media.

Jurors narrowed down many submissions to over 150 pieces — abstracts, landscapes and still life, wild life and florals — for this season’s judge, Seattle artist/art educator/author Patrick Howe (“The Awakening Artist: Madness and Spiritual Awakening in Art”), to sort through and rank.

Gallery North hosted a March 5th artist’s reception/awards ceremony, where the winners received their much-deserved due.

First place went to Tannis Moore for “Calm,” second — Stephan Bahr’s “Christmas Berries,” and third — Lonetta Avelar’s “Inquisitive.” Honorable mentions: Beverly Fotheringham’s “Cats Rule 24” and Nadia Hakki’s “Pacific Curves.”

Selected submissions are currently on display at the front of the gallery. 

Each piece in its own way — impressionist, romantic, photographic, or abstract — touches on the universal… a pensive mood or a startling moment, articulating and connecting human nature to nature in the wild.

A few of the Small Works artists plan to attend March’s third Thursday AWE to meet and greet. Congratulate them in person. Find out what makes them tick.

The much-heralded 20th-century NW artists at Cascadia Art Museum are as different as the sun, the moon, and the stars. But all three stir the imagination and the senses, often to depths that defy understanding. In their time, Holocaust survivor Maria Frank Abrams, gay tempera watercolor artist Sherrill Van Cott, and decorated Korean War veteran Howard Dallas Duell made indelible marks in history.

Abrams combined abstract largesse and transparent, color-bold shorthand, with a kind of ready-made, elevated poster art in her pieces. The museum will show over 40 of her original works in watercolor, oil, printmaking, and drawing.

Bare-bone density, control amidst chaos, fluid shapes and tattered pieces…they all play a pivotal role throughout Van Cott’s tragically short career, dying at the tender age of 29. He left behind a small, but powerful collection, an exemplary showcase of master manipulation with the precious, quick-drying medium of tempera, and the elusive, shifty fabric of watercolor — on mulberry paper. Every choice is purposeful and brilliant, adding to the evocative, dreamy, forever effect.

The former chair of Edmonds Community College’s Art Dept. let the source speak out loud with wondrous results. A metal sculpture conveying myriad concepts, from stick figures vying for supremacy or climbing monkey bars in the playground of our childhood. Carved wooden sails ready for an indigenous voyage, perhaps the one Polynesians made to the Hawaiian islands. Wood, stone, plastic, metal, clay, found objects, paint… all fodder for the precise, sophisticated pieces that won him awards, commissions, and a place in art history.

Abrams and Van Cott’s work is on display March 3-July 10. Duell, Jan. 13-Nov. 20.

The new Graphite Arts Center sent a call out to marginalized, underrepresented artists for its May 1-July 16 juried "Intersections" show. "This juried show seeks to feature artists who face categorical discrimination: whose visibility and unique voices are integral to the art and culture of our communities [website]." Any artist affected by race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, religion, citizenship, class/economic status, and/or ability...is eligible. Applications due by March 31.

Art, it's what Edmonds does best.

Feature image: Glenda Weibel's "Daddy's Arms," Gallery North "Small Works Show" selection
Additional images: Diana Grant's "Rainy Garden II," abstract, now showing at crow, AWE; Maria Frank Abrams' casein on paper, "Elemental Sphere," Cascadia Art Museum; Gallery North's "Small Works" — Frankie Gollub and Tannis Moore's winning piece, "Calm"; Howard Duell's "Untitled" painted steel wire sculpture (Cascadia Art Museum); Cole Gallery — Jeff White's "A Sense Of Silence" and Michael Orwick's "Upon The Wind"