Moab Gallery will be showing works by guest artist Louise Seiler and featured artist Nick Eason throughout the month of April. Both Seiler and Eason have lived in Moab for decades, although their art forms are very different: Seiler paints playful desert scenes while Eason carves wooden animal sculptures.

“I really love sharing my art with all people who love art,” Seiler said. “When I step back and watch people observe my art, not knowing that I’m the artist, when I see them smiling, then it’s worth it.”

Seiler’s acrylic paintings typically depict animals – toads, rabbits, coyotes, horses – drawn in an almost comical style, juxtaposing the landscape in which they are set. Seiler wants to portray “happiness” in her art, she said.

“The happiness and beauty that goes with happiness and health,” she said. “Longevity finds its way into my work because we all need more laughter in life, especially now.”

Seiler is a self-taught artist, although she grew up in a family of artists: her sister is an artist and her parents studied art at the University of Utah. Her style was born unconsciously from years of painting, she says, and her art studies.

Her painting process begins with a “spark”, she says, which really can be anything: another painting, an animal she saw on a hike, or an “unconscious awakening”.

“It’s a little hint, or something that I see in nature, and from there I elaborate it in my style,” Seiler said.

Featured artist Nick Eason has lived in Moab since 1995, after a career in the military and the National Park Service. He learned woodcarving on a whim – he discovered the art form when he found a book on carving in a Chicago library.

“I found a piece of wood in the driveway, and I had a pocket knife and a scroll saw,” he said. “That started the interest, and from there it evolved over the years and years.”

His intricately detailed woodcarvings depict wildlife: his works currently on display at Gallery Moab include owls, birds, rabbits and deer. Eason has always had an interest in nature and wildlife, he said, which led him to pursue a career with the National Park Service. What he calls his “interpretive” style was developed over years of trial and error, he said.

Eason begins each sculpture by sculpting the animal in modeling clay. He will use reference photos and observations to perfect the clay “sketch”, then he will carve the piece out of the wood. Eason uses hardwoods, like black walnut and sycamore, because these woods have more character, he said.

“There’s a good community of artists here, and it’s always wonderful to come together and hear different people’s perspectives and different approaches to things,” Eason said.

The cooperative gallery, founded in 2014, presents works by different local artists every month.

Manager Peggy Harty said she chooses which artists to feature in different ways: Featured artists are already members of the gallery and guest artists she usually finds through connections with other artists.

Harty said she was proud of how the gallery has grown through a recent move and through the challenges of COVID-19.

“In a way, I just feel like we’ve developed a reputation and people see us as a real art gallery,” Harty said. “We are here to support local artists and enrich the community through art. And I think we help fulfill that role.

Works by Seiler and Eason will be on display at Gallery Moab (58 S. Main St.) throughout the month. There will also be a reception during the April Art Walk on April 9 from 5 to 8 p.m.