Additions opened on First Friday, June 5, and ran through August 6. It marked two artists joining the permanent program on Bainbridge Island, and they could hardly work further apart.

Ross Collado is a Seattle-based painter who was born and raised in the Philippines, where, as he puts it, expressing emotions is often considered a sign of weakness — especially for men. His abstract paintings work in the other direction. He is clear that making them is not therapy; it is a series of intense moments. In his own words: “It’s like I am walking through a creative tunnel of exploding colors and ideas waiting to come to life with each brushstroke.”

The works are mixed media on canvas and on wood panel, built up in layers of colour and mark, and the titles carry the subject he keeps returning to — belonging. You Belong Here Now. Still, We Belong. But Where’s Home. Read together, they are a single question asked several ways.

Tamera Abaté works in encaustic, one of the oldest painting methods there is. On her own account, each panel is built from as many as thirty layers of beeswax, tree sap and pigment, every layer fused to the one beneath it with a propane torch before the next goes on. Because the wax stays translucent, the lower layers remain visible through the upper ones, so the depth in her work is physical rather than drawn.

Her subjects are water and weather — River of Time, Verde River, Honey Creek, Life Currents, Alpenglow, Milk Moon — landscapes pushed to the point where they begin to become abstraction, and held there.

Both artists remain part of the program. Their works can be seen at the gallery at 176 Winslow Way E, Bainbridge Island, and on their pages at jgartgallery.com.