Gallery-9 in Port Townsend is featuring the artwork of oil painter Linda Marie Kempe and self-taught woodturner Jon Geisbush for the month of July.

Kempe creates works ranging from paintings to wearable fabric arts, and has spent the past 20 years selling what’s developed into what she refers to as “flow energy art.”

Kempe explained the label by saying, “My responsibility as an artist is to let go of preconception, and allow the art to create itself through me.”

Kempe’s paintings are inspired in part by social and environmental issues, but also draw heavily from her own psyche. She said that her “personal soul work” channels images that “appear active in my mind, combining nature, dreams, the common and the unknown,” as well as portraits and surrealism.

Kempe paints mostly in oil on canvas or board, although sometimes also in watercolor on paper.

“Images appear in my mind, and I grab a canvas or paper, and quickly sketch, letting the idea develop as I go,” Kempe said. “The images come through me, not from me.”

Kempe noted that artistic creation isn’t something she can force to happen, but “when it comes naturally, I am in a state of flow.” Acting “as a tool, facilitating the transfer of images,” is like watching the art appear before her, “sometimes in stages, sometimes all at once.”

Rather than compelling herself to create art, Kempe said her “job is to be ready to flow with it when it comes.”

Geisbush, a native Washingtonian, has always enjoyed working with his hands, from rebuilding car engines and transmissions in his younger years to restoring a small hydroplane in college. Upon retiring from his engineering career afforded him the opportunity to take up woodturning.

When Geisbush began his hobby, about 15 years ago, his family provided him with a wood lathe and bandsaw to get started, and his early experiences with woodturning quickly taught him about different species and starting forms of wood, and how each one “provided different presentations.”

Returning to Western Washington made new sources of wood available to Geisbush, and allowed him to meet other woodturners, who were more than happy to provide him with discussions and demonstrations of their methods.

Geisbush has become increasingly fascinated with exploring and experimenting with wood to see what he could find inside, from the colors to the grain figures that might lie within the wood. He’s learned that such explorations help determine how best to turn the wood and discover what details it’s capable of revealing.

Geisbush became a member of Gallery-9 in the spring of 2022, and continues to experiment with the colors and presentation of wood.

Gallery-9 is a cooperative of local artists opened every day but Tuesday, with summer hours from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. It stays open until 8 p.m. on the first Saturday of the month for the Art Walk.