"Hot August Nights" brings erotic and sensuous nudes to the gallery by two talented figurative artists from the Northwest.

Carrie Vielle makes her home on the curvaceous landscape of the Palouse in eastern Washington.  Her works on canvas are a beautiful combination of traditional figurative elements and a contemporary application of mixed media. Gentle curves and a fluid execution lead the eye across the soft curves of the female form just as your eye would wander with ease across the rolling hills of the sun kissed Palouse. Lyrical and storied, Vielle combines a variety of prose and music by collage to her canvases which offer a variety of emotions from sensuous moments to free expression.

Living on the western slope of the Cascades in the damp shadow of western Washington clouds and evergreens, Ken Wachtveitl approaches his figurative works from a completely different perspective than Vielle does. His palette of earth tones and mossy green lichen vary from each "canvas" he uses. Using a prehistoric piece of flat, yet irregular slate, Wachtveitl lets the stone guide him as he painstakingly uses the stippling process of thousands of dots of ink on the surface to create the soft curves of the female figure against an organic background. Weathered stone releasing gentle curves and sensuous poses that seem so incongruous until you actually see it before you.