My home is filled with original art from Pacific Northwest artists, but it wasn’t always this way. I used to actually be terrified of buying original art…actually any art above like $100.
Every purchase felt permanent and I couldn’t imagine loving something for the rest of my life…especially when it cost tens of thousands of dollars! And don’t even get me started with art galleries. I wouldn’t step foot in one for fear of being laughed at for asking about the price.
It took me a while to realize original art doesn’t have to be tens of thousands of dollars. You can find original art for well under $5,000…actually a lot of times around $100 depending on the size!
Since I love to shop local, I wanted to share my favorite Pacific Northwest artists making modern art that won’t break the bank. While a lot of them also sell prints at much lower prices, I included the price range of their original artworks so you can get a sense of the investment. Now let’s get your home filled with wall art you’ll love!
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Best Pacific Northwest Artists
I’ll continue to update this guide as I find more PNW artists, so save this to Pinterest for later!
Lesley Frenz
link to buy | Camano Island, WA | best for: ethereal watercolors and acrylics
Lesley Frenz is hands down one of my favorite Pacific Northwest artists. I own four pieces by her and am dreaming of creating an accent wall with her custom wallpaper.
Her work is an ethereal take on nature, inspired by her hiking adventures around the PNW. I own a piece similar to the one pictured above. While her work has become less abstract over the years, her focus on our region’s beautiful landscape makes her a Pacific Northwest artist to know.
Price range: Two of the 16×20″ original art prints I own were about $300 and my two smaller ones were in the $150-$200 range.
Corrie LaVelle
link to buy | Seattle, WA | best for: abstract encaustic art
Corrie is a Seattle-based artist who makes incredibly breathtaking original art using a method called “encaustic”. Essentially this means she slowly adds a mixture of pigmented beeswax and damar resin while simultaneously keeping the encaustic wax hot using a blowtorch and heat gun.
Each piece is the result of layers and layers of wax that eventually fuse together into a marbled finished product. We have two of her pieces, one that hangs over our fireplace. We stop to admire it daily!
Price range: This is the most expensive piece of art I own at $2,200. However it’s a 30×40″ investment piece that we don’t regret buying one bit.
Melanie Biehle
link to buy | Everett, WA | best for: bold abstract art
Melanie makes beautiful, colorful abstract paintings perfect for leaving an impression. She has this uncanny ability of making her work look like a collage, yet she only uses paint. I love her work so much that I actually own two of her artworks.
Price range: The two pieces I have were $50 each, but they’re small 5×5 canvases. I’d say her price range is more in the $600 price range for medium sizes and $1,500 – $3,500 for oversized 30″+ pieces. She also sells beautiful prints for as low as $40.
Mike Biskup
link to buy | Port Townsend, WA | best for: colorful, symmetrical patterns
I came across Mike’s work at the annual Edmonds Art Festival (one of my favorite events of the year!). He makes fun, colorful art that is like a mid century modern version of an abstract Where’s Waldo. I love his use of color and symmetry to make interesting pieces you can get lost in for hours trying to decipher.
Price range: While he has some large original art in the $2,000 – $4,000 range, most of his medium-sized pieces are around $400 – $500. I spent about $450 on the one I own.
Pro tip: Visiting his pop-up gallery is one of the best things to do in Port Townsend!
Ross Collado
link to buy | Seattle, WA | best for: moody abstracts
Ross Boa Collado is a Filipino artist that focuses on abstract expressionism art. You can’t help but feel something when you look at his work. That’s likely because Collado portrays utopian and dystopian landscapes through the striking use of rich, dark colors and sharp lines. His acrylic medium moves fluidly between soft and harshness, which helps portray a vulnerability in all of his art.
His passion for activism and social justice made 2020 the year his art really took off. A piece honoring George Floyd and the BLM protests was his first commission, which is fitting given his ability to capture emotion on the canvas.
Price range: Collado mainly produces larger canvases over 24″ that range between $800 – $2,700, but his work averages at about the $1,500 mark.
Anastasia Stockman
link to buy | Victoria, BC | best for: still life
Anastasia Stockman is a BIPOC Canadian artist who makes dreamy paintings of everyday objects. She uses rich colors and a painting technique that add a lot of depth to her pieces. The strokes give them this whimsical, subtle Dali-like feeling that’s more modern than your still life portraits of times past.
Price range: Stockman’s original oil paintings range from $500 – $1,000. She sells them exclusively through Sweet Pea Gallery, but her prints are available on her website.
Andrea Lewicki
link to buy | Duvall, WA | best for: abstract paper art
Andrea is a newer discovery I just had to add to my list of Pacific Northwest artists. I stumbled on her work while at the Shoreline Arts Festival and was absolutely floored by her creativity. She uses beautiful paper cut into different shapes and hand stitched to make interesting mixed media and 3-D art. I loved her work so much that we actually bought two of her Nest pieces, including the one below.
Price range: Her pieces range from $125 for smaller pieces to around $500 for larger formats.
Mister Michelle
link to buy | Seattle, WA | best for: bold art deco-style pieces
Michelle is a Black Pacific Northwest artist making some seriously striking pieces. She often uses gold leaf in her paintings to create these intricate, art deco-esque pieces that have these lines that make her work look miles long. They remind me of pieces you’d see in mid century homes in the 50s, but there’s a global vibe to them that makes it really current. I’ve been eyeing her work for a while and hope to get my hands on an original piece!
Price range: Her pieces generally start at $2,500 and go up depending on the size. They sell out fast, so sign up for her newsletter to hear when new art becomes available.
Susan Point
link to buy | Vancouver, BC | best for: Native-made art
Susan Point is an Indigenous artist of the Musqueam people, descendants of the Coast Salish people of the Pacific Northwest. If you’re looking for Pacific Northwest artists, it doesn’t get more authentic than this. And, if this is the style of art you’re after, hopefully you’re buying it directly from Indigenous peoples instead of others appropriating and profiting off their culture.
What I love about Susan’s art is that her work is obviously inspired by the history and traditions of her ancestors. However, she uses non-traditional materials and techniques to create a modern, sometimes abstract version of her peoples’ stories.
She sells her work directly through her website and at galleries like the Coastal Peoples Fine Arts Gallery in Vancouver, another great source for finding Indigenous artists.
Price range: Her work ranges from $1,300 – $3,000, but most pieces are in the low-mid of that range.
Seth Sexton
link to buy | Seattle, WA | best for: bold mixed-media pieces
Do you remember those spirograph kits from the 90s that were like stencils that let you draw symmetrical shapes? There’s something about Seth’s work that reminds me of that, but way more profesh. He creates extremely detailed, large format paintings using different multimedia that draw you into an endless vortex of shapes and patterns.
Price range: He’s one of the pricer artists on this list at around $3,000 per original art piece, but they’re quite large investment pieces (30″ – 40″+). He also offers payment plans to make his art more accessible.
Julie Kim
link to buy | Seattle, WA | best for: geometric watercolors using natural pigments
Julie is a Korean artist who creates dreamy muted watercolors using pigments made of natural materials like rock, clay, and more. Her work has a symmetry to it, yet it feels organic thanks to the softness in her curves and lines. I also love how she shares details of how she makes pigments from various items she forages on hikes.
Price range: Her original pieces start at $100 and go as high as $1,500+, depending on the size and if you purchased it framed. If a piece you love is too much, she also sells gicleé reproductions that are in the $40-$80 range.
Maggie Ramirez Burns
link to buy | Seattle, WA | best for: colorful 3-D floral art
Maggie Ramirez Burns is a first generation American of Hispanic parents who unfortunately lost her mother at a young age. It made her appreciate the small details of life, such as the wonders of the sky and sea or the feeling of the breeze.
This inspired her focus on intricate pieces celebrating flora and fauna. She does both paintings and collages, but it is her collages I find the most breathtaking. She uses recycled paper to create intricate, 3-D pieces that you can’t help but take in for minutes upon minutes.
Price range: Burns’ work is super detailed, so it skews on the higher range of the artists listed in this article at about $1,600 – $3,500. She sells most of her originals through Seattle Art Source, so make sure to check there if you don’t see something you like on her website.
Nathalie Minerva P.
link to buy | Seattle, WA | best for: white textural landscapes
Nathalie Minerva P. is a Franco-American artist from Montreal who resides in Seattle. She depicts the water and mountains of the Pacific Northwest because she’s a fierce advocate against climate change. Her pieces look almost like architectural elements thanks to the spackle-like medium she uses. Her art is all white and has a ton of texture, almost like it’s three dimensional thanks to how the paint rises off the canvas.
Price range: Minerva’s work runs on the pricier side at $2,800 – $4,500, but that’s because she focuses on large scale canvases 30″ and larger. Her pieces are meant to be a showstopper in your home, so it’s an investment worth making. Plus the white palette means it’ll never go out of style.
Cooper Art and Abode
link to buy | Bend, OR | best for: colorful midcentury landscapes
Kristine Cooper’s work makes a statement. She specializes in large format, neon-colored paintings that captures inspiration from her PNW travels. Some of her pieces are more abstract, while others are pop art-like in how they portray nature. The way she’s able to manipulate acrylic paints, charcoals, and varying mixed media to feel both organic, yet modern is a testament to her skill.
Price range: She has affordable prints starting at just $30. Her original artwork, which skews larger, starts at about $1,450.
Nikita Ares
link to buy | Seattle, WA | best for: colorful explosions of shapes
Nikita is a Filipina artist who is perfect for when you need a dose of happiness in your home. Her work features organic shapes and squiggles in bright neon colors that depict the tension between the flow of energy and chaos of movement. There’s a modern graffiti-like quality to her work but with a bit of a synth quality that would make any nostalgic 80s kid swoon.
Price range: Nikita sells both prints and original work, the latter of which ranges from $150-$200 for her smaller pieces. She often posts her larger pieces on Instagram, so keep an eye out if you don’t see something on her website that catches your eye.
Erin Oostra
link to buy | Seattle, WA | best for: an urban take on abstract mountainscapes
Erin often shares videos of how she creates her art and it’s absolutely hypnotizing. Her focus is on mountains because of her love of hiking, but it’s not your typical landscape design. It reminds me of murals you’d see in cities, as her drip and stroke technique makes her work look more graffiti like.
Price range: I bought one of her 8×10 prints for just $18, but her large format original artwork goes for closer to $1,500-$2,000.
Ilana Zweschi
link to buy | Seattle,WA | best for: geometric art designed with science
Ilana Zweschi has one of the most unique approaches to art out of all the Pacific Northwest artists I’ve come across. She marries science and art by deconstructing destructive texts and disempowering their message. What does this look like? For example, taking hate speech from an influential political figure, alphabetically reordering their rhetoric, and putting it through an algorithm she devised to determine the brush strokes for her art.
This depth of thinking in making a political statement absolutely blows my mind, especially when you look at her work at face value. It’s colorful and mimics rainbow and chromosome-like shapes, exuding happiness. So knowing the more sinister story that inspires each piece is beautifully haunting.
Price range: Zweschi makes art on all sized canvases, but her $350 – $700 for pieces under 11″ x 16″ are a wonderfully affordable option.
Anna Wetzel Artz
link to buy | Seattle,WA | best for: mixed media using recycled materials
Anna Wetzel is an elementary school art teacher who rethinks how to recycle scraps of paper, thread, and other fragments of our lives into something beautiful. She’s interested in exploring how we navigate cycles of rupture and repair, whether that be breaking through our own demons and overcoming them or how our planet regrows after the constant distress we put it under.
You can really sense that fracture in Wetzel’s work…how it’s carefully stitched together by her careful arrangement, yet still fragile.
Price range: Wetzel has original art for all prices ranges, running between $50 – $1,450 depending on the size.
Evan Elizabeth Arts
link to buy | Seattle,WA | best for: pastel-colored landscapes
Evan Hilsenberg-Riley is a hyper local artist, as she grew up in Ballard and now resides in Shoreline a short drive from my house. I discovered her work at the Crown Hill Art Fair one summer and loved her use of color and shadows to make the canvas come alive. She studies the way light moves throughout the day to change how we perceive the nature around us, which translates as movement in her art.
Price range: Her work runs between $450 – $1,200 depending on the size.
Jade Mikell
link to buy | Victoria, BC | best for: muted, ethereal art exploring the body
Jade Mikell is another emerging artist represented by Sweet Pea Gallery in Canada. She’s Autistic, which heavily influences her work that looks at the inadequacies assigned to those with disabilities in our environment. Her mission is to legitimize the disabled community, using her art to identify, upend, and communicate the inaccessibility that they navigate in our world.
I absolutely love the context and advocacy behind Mikell’s work. I also really appreciate how she has a variety of art that ranges from the more abstract to those that include identifiable yet still abstracted bodies. As someone who tends to shy away from portraiture and humans in my own art collection, I love how Mikell’s pieces toe the line between styles.
Price range: Mikell’s work is a great introduction to original art, as it starts at just $40 and doesn’t tend to go over $400.
Amanda Rose
link to buy | Guemes Island,WA | best for: geometric meditation pillars
Amanda Rose is a yoga teacher who extends her practice to her art. She creates mediation pillars using acrylic paint on wood, exploring how symmetry and shapes can help bring peace into our lives.
I love Rose’s uses of colors and repetition to bring a soothing simplicity to her art. Her work would go beautifully in many styles of homes, particularly boho or midcentury modern.
Price range: Rose’s work ranges from $180 – $850. This is a steal considering some of her larger pillars are 4 feet long!
Kippi Leonard
link to buy | Seattle,WA & Palm Springs, CA | best for: geometric abstracts
Kippi is a Pacific Northwest native who now resides in Palm Springs, CA, but she spends a lot of time in Seattle and her work is available at local galleries, so I’m keeping her on this list of the best Pacific Northwest artists!
Her specialty is geometric abstract art that uses both oil painting and organic material she collects from her travels. The result is a muted color palette with striking use of texture. I have one of her geometric pieces on my living room gallery wall and it’s a conversation piece for sure.
Price range: My 24×24″ original framed canvas painting similar to the one pictured above was $690, so I think it’s safe to say you can get a lot of her work for under $1,000.
Seattle art galleries with PNW artists
There are quite a few art galleries in Seattle, especially the Pioneer Square neighborhood. Here are two of my favorites for buying work from local artists.
Seattle Art Source
website | 5531 Airport Way S | best for: affordability
I have gallery curator Sarah Hurt to thank for exposing me to the best Pacific Northwest artists. Actually, to original art in general. Before I hired her to help me find art, I was terrified of committing to anything over $100 because I worried I’d get sick of it. I also didn’t think it was even possible to work with a gallery curator for less than $10,000.
She helped me learn that original art can be affordable and found pieces for me that I immediately loved. I actually learned about Lesley Frenz, Kippi Leonard, and Corrie LaVelle through her, so you know she has impeccable taste! While you can expect to find all types of art from her, I’d say a lot of it is made up of more muted, feminine, and ethereal abstracts.
Besides her high taste level, she’s straight up about prices and puts them in her Instagram captions and posts. You can also try art in your home before you buy to make sure you love it. Plus her services don’t cost anything. So if you need help finding Pacific Northwest artists or styling your home, Sarah is your lady!
J. Rinehart Gallery
website | 319 3rd Ave S | best for: bold modern art
I learned about Judith’s gallery in Pioneer Square from Lesley Frenz. When I wanted to snatch up one of her pieces, I reached out to Judith during the peak of COVID-19. Her gallery was closed, but she came out of her way to bring the art I was interested in to my door to try.
She carries a lot of artists around the US, but also ones from Washington. I find the art she curates to typically be more bold. Think more linear lines, mixed media, and darker colors. If this is your style, you’re going to love this gallery!
Where to get help styling art
Overwhelmed by the idea of where to place all your art? My friend Mackenzie of Schieck Spaces is an interior stylist who is a wizard at creating interesting gallery walls, styling shelves, and placing objects around your home. She’d be the perfect partner in showcasing the art in your space.
Other favorite places for art
As I’ve become more obsessed with finding small artists and affordable artwork, I’ve stumbled upon other places I turn to again and again for art.
- Laurie Anne Fine Art – Laurie Anne is an artist from Phoenix that I’m obsessed with. I own 5 of her pieces gorgeous landscapes.
- Gina Gaetz – Gina is an artist from Minneapolis making beautiful abstract pieces. One of her artworks adorn my gallery wall in our living room.
- Elysia Myers – Elysia makes paintings out of WINE. She is a girl of my heart. I own one of her small landscapes.
- Tina J Studio – Tina is a New Orleans artist making interesting, collage-style abstract artworks at affordable prices.
- Casa di Lavalle – A local home goods store run by Cassandra Lavalle, a tastemaker that works with emerging artists.
- Gregg Irby Gallery – I’m not sure how I discovered this gallery in the south, but they curate so much artwork that I love.
- Joelle Somero – Joelle is based out of Michigan and makes INCREDIBLE large format artwork similar to Kippi Leonard.
- Uprise Art – This small art gallery out of New York City curates under-the-radar modern artists that I always tend to love.
- Saatchi Art – This is the most mainstream place I turn to for art. They sell both original work and prints.
More artists from the Pacific Northwest
The PNW is full of makers. If you love filling your home with their goods, check out my other guides.
- The Best Local Seattle Jewelry Makers
- Pacific Northwest Gifts for Everyone on Your List
- Foodie Gifts Made in the PNW
- Stock Your Pantry with These PNW Food Goods
- Best Gifts Online from Seattle
