New ‘old masters’ Kesler Woodward and Joan Kimura at Blue.Hollomon

"I paint big abstract paintings that happen to look like birch trees," said Fairbanks artist Kesler Woodward.

Several such paintings are on display at Blue.Hollomon Gallery, Olympic Center Mall at 3555 Arctic Blvd., which hosted a reception for the long-time Alaska art scholar and teacher. And they can be read either way, as pure color and texture compositions or as pretty straight-forward depictions of landscape and nature, although with unexpected focuses. Think about viewing an alpine tundra vista from a high point, then laying on your belly and inspecting a square foot of the same tundra close up.

At his opening reception on July 1, Woodward said he's become increasingly interested in how climate change affects what he might be painting in the future. In the past 20 or 30 years, he said, the growing season in Fairbanks has grown from 90 days to something like 110 days.

Blue.Hollomon is also hosting a show by Joan Kimura, who began her career in New York in the 1950s and moved to Alaska in 1971 after she married Alaska photographer Sam Kimura. The couple eventually retired to Washington, but Joan is coming back to celebrate her 83rd birthday and show off some recent work.

A reception will take place at 5 p.m. Friday, July 15, and Kimura will present a talk at 2 p.m. on Saturday. She'll also be hanging out at the gallery on Sunday, for old friends who want to stop by and sing "Happy Birthday."