By Janette Turner

Throughout the year, the Edmonds Arts Festival Foundation and the Edmonds Arts Commission feature selected artists whose body of work deserves recognition. These artists are at the top of their game, and the upcoming show in the gallery in the Edmonds library featuring artist Irene Yesley proves the point.

We checked in with Yesley to learn more about her career and the show opening Sept. 18.

My Edmonds News:  How you were selected to be a featured artist at the Library?

I.Y.: The Edmonds Art Commission invited me to show my work in their space at the Edmonds Library last December. I am not familiar with the process they use to select their artists but I am happy to have been invited.

My Edmonds News:  Please tell us a little bit about your career.

I.Y. I earned an MFA in printmaking from Arizona State University. After graduation, I bought two floor looms and started making rugs and tapestries. Eventually I grew frustrated with the restraints of weaving, the warp and the weft, and especially the fact that I could never change anything, so I sold my looms and started down the path of rediscovering what kind of artist I wanted to be. Since then I have used pencil, pastel and oil stick on paper, done reverse painting on plexi-glass, acrylics, gouache and pencil on wooden panels and gesso board and now I have returned to painting on layers of plexi-glass and stacking them to make three- dimensional paintings.

The biggest influence on my work is the outdoors. My first landscape was Spokane, where I grew up. That was followed by  cactus of Arizona, urbanscapes of Boston and Washington, DC,  chaparral of Topanga Canyon, and 22 years in the desert of Santa Fe, New Mexico. For six years until 2004, my husband and I had a condo in Kas, Turkey, on the Turquoise Coast of the Mediterranean, where I spent six months a year. Now I live on an island across Puget Sound from Seattle in a temperate rainforest. Without even being aware of what was happening, each new location has changed the shapes and colors in my work.

My Edmonds News: Tell us about some of your favorite pieces and where folks can see them.

I.Y.: Well, this is probably the answer most artists will give. My favorite piece is the one I just finished. Each piece feels as if it has grown from what has gone before and, therefore, is better.  The last piece gets to be my favorite piece until the next piece is finished.  There are a few pieces I feel attached to from the past but that also is influenced by what kind of work I am currently doing. It is fortunate artists favor their most recent pieces, otherwise they could never bear to sell anything.

My Edmonds News: What is your inspiration for this show?

I.Y.: When I learned I was going to have this solo show in Edmonds, I decided it would be only Plexi-glass pieces. I like working on pieces of plexi-glass and stacking them 3 layers deep in a frame because the paintings then become three dimensional.  It has always bothered me that paintings are so flat. Using plexi-glass was my solution to this.

Most of the pieces in this show were painted during the last two years but four (the square paintings) were made several years ago. The square paintings are very calm. I painted them right after I moved to the Northwest after living twenty-two years in Santa Fe, NM.  As usual, moving, especially this distance and after so many years, feels unsettling so, as I look back on it, I think I wanted to paint pieces that were peaceful.

Now that I have lived in the Seattle area nine years, it is clear that the green and blue colors of the Northwest have replaced the subtle pinks and reds of New Mexico.

My Edmonds News: Is there anything else that you would like folks to know?

I.Y.: The thread that runs through all my work, whatever the image, is patterns against a relatively flat background.  My shapes are always hard-edge.  Physical textures, such as brush strokes, play a minimal role.   I always consider the interplay of positive and negative shapes.  In this regard, the artist Morandi is my hero.  Color always plays an emotional role.

Starting a piece, I have a general idea of the shapes I will use and colors but I have no preconceived idea of the result. Therefore, starting a painting is the easiest part. As the painting progresses, a relationship develops between me and the image.  It is no longer possible that all the elements will work together and this is when painting becomes more difficult.  Decisions must be made, shapes, spaces and colors removed, reshaped or added.  I am not finished until all the pieces seem to fit together with no part calling out for change.  I work slowly, rarely painting more than 15 paintings in one year.