Arts & Entertainment Community

New arts partnership focuses on progress, not perfection

Putting on a show, even at a small local gallery, can feel intimidating for many artists. That’s part of why the Peninsula Art League and Ebb Tide Gallery, a downtown artist cooperative, have decided to partner up to showcase regional artists.

Artist Kathy Thurston, an art league member who also belongs to Ebb Tide Gallery, approached league President Robin Avni with the idea in September 2025. The partnership will feature eight artists throughout the year, five of whom will be exclusively art league members. The league will pay the $75 fee for gallery showcasing. The gallery will organize a two-hour reception for artists as well as a one-month display in the gallery space.

Thurston thought the partnership will benefit both the league’s artists and the gallery. Many artists, no matter how many years they have been working, have never had a show of their own.

“It’s not something that you can just go do. You have to kind of find a good place to do it and feel that you’re welcome there and that your art will be put on display and it will be a good experience for you,” she explained. “A lot of artists are kind of shy and work independently and don’t have that experience or the confidence to go ahead and do something like that. So we decided we would put together a program where we could invite artists to apply.”

Artists front and center

The partnership’s inaugural artist is Susan Wheeler, a Poulsbo-based painter who comes from a dance background and works under the name Dancers in the Trees. Thurston said that the Ebb Tide committee chose Wheeler in part because her paintings express her love of nature and hold hidden dancers within.

“If you look at the paintings, most of them have figurative dancers embedded in the picture — but you don’t see it at first. You have to get up close and you go, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s a dancer,’” Thurston said. “I liked her imagination. … She’s really using herself to express her passion about how she feels about the world, and a lot of her paintings are around nature and they use bright colors. You can see her technique is really nice. She finished the paintings off very nicely. … We really enjoyed her energy and technique.”

Susan Wheeler’s paintings hang on the wall of Ebb Tide Gallery, pictured here on Feb. 15, 2026. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick

The gallery requires artists to put forth effort into making themselves more public. They have to have some sort of presence in the public sphere already, through a website or social media, and be willing to help spread the word about the reception the gallery will put on for them.

But it can be hard to overcome different mental barriers, including shyness or the usual stress of submitting to a formal art show with no guarantee that one’s work will be accepted. That’s why, in choosing artists, the gallery is also focused on creators whose work demonstrates progress over time, rather than perfection.

“We want to be inviting to people. We don’t want to get them feeling tense that they are going to do this show,” Thurston said.

New energy

For artists who are shy, the partnership is also a way to get them out of their studios and into public with support, rather than leaving them to their own devices. Thurston said that the gallery will not only host a reception for that artist, both the gallery and art league will also do marketing and advertising for the artist. The gallery will even host an auction for the artist’s work, if they so desire.

“If they’re really shy about that, I tell them, ‘I’ll help you. I’ll be there for you and you have to show up, talk about your work,’ ” Thurston said. If an artist isn’t comfortable with that, Thurston said she can help reframe it as something the artist is doing for the community — that they are presenting their work to create that personal connection with it.

One of Susan Wheeler’s paintings hangs on the wall of Ebb Tide Gallery, pictured here on Feb. 15, 2026. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick

“So far, it’s been going great. It’s very busy,” Thurston said. “We were needing some new energy in the gallery. I felt like if we could get some people in that were excited about their art, really wanted to be part of it, that it would kind of draw people in and make it a more dynamic situation where people wanted to witness that — and I think it’s happening. We feel really good about the program.”

Artists interested in submitting their work for consideration can fill out an application here.