The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

It takes a lot of skill to be controlled yet simultaneously spontaneous. For oil painter Laura Gable, the best place to achieve this is outside, regardless of the weather, as she paints en plein air, the French term for painting outside.

"I am currently obsessed with the landscape and light/shadow patterns," the Kennewick artist says. "I like the intimacy of close places and the vastness of large skies."

Gable describes art as a form of language, one she developed as a child as a means of communicating despite extreme shyness. Her style is impressionistic, with bold brushstrokes that invite...