Artist, kayaker to give free gallery talk

PORT TOWNSEND — “The bridge! The currents! The excitement! Look where you want to go! Deep diggity dig … feeling alive! It’s all there.”

So writes ocean kayaker Shawna Marie Franklin about “Deception Pass,” one of the oil paintings in her one-woman show in Port Townsend.

The pass, 31 miles north of Port Townsend, is among the places she paddled during her career as a professional kayaker.

Franklin will give a public talk at 3 p.m. Sunday at Northwind Art’s Jeanette Best Gallery, where her exhibition, titled “Being with Kelp,” is on view. Admission is free at the gallery, 701 Water St. For more information about the show and the artist, visit NorthwindArt.org.

“Being with Kelp,” Franklin said, is a major project inspired by her daily work on the ocean, where kelp was her companion.

One of the largest pieces, the 6-by-4-foot “Marriage Proposal,” blends plants and animals seen while Franklin and her husband Leon Somme circumnavigated Vancouver Island by kayak in 2012. That was the trip when Somme asked Franklin to be his wife.

After a languid, meandering day of paddling, the pair landed on a beach of white sand and shells.

“I’m happy and content, and feel so loved,” she recalls; “I cannot imagine my life without him. I would have married him the first day I met him.”

Franklin and Somme brought her artworks to Port Townsend in late January for her show, which will stay on view through March 31. Gallery hours are from noon to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Mondays, plus 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on March 1 for the First Saturday Art Walk.

“You can see the love in these paintings and the intimacy,” said Northwind Art volunteer Martha Pfanschmidt.

On the “Being with Kelp” exhibition’s opening day, Jan. 30, she marveled at pieces such as “Realm,” “Buoyancy” and “Holdfast,” which Franklin painted after snorkeling in the sea.

“Moving across the bottom,” she said, “I am mesmerized by the fragmented prisms of light.”