Digital artist invites public to a free demo at Northwind

Published 1:30 am Thursday, April 9, 2026

PORT TOWNSEND — In one of Lucia Enriquez’s deep-blue paintings, a mystical white bird gazes out over a sea. It might be the Pacific Ocean or a body of water in the artist’s mind’s eye, or both.

The piece, titled “Agila Looking for Land,” is an example of the digital drawing and painting process Enriquez will demonstrate on Sunday in a free event at Northwind Art’s Jeanette Best Gallery.

The interactive demonstration and talk will start at 3 p.m. in the gallery at 701 Water St., Port Townsend.

Enriquez, who builds her artworks using both digital and analog techniques, is showing her paintings in round one of Northwind’s juried “Showcase 2026” exhibit, on view through May 11.

More information is at NorthwindArt.org.

“One point I would like to stress is that my art is not AI,” Enriquez said in an interview from her home in Anacortes.

She added that she sought out sophisticated painting software that allows her to work with colors as though they are physical liquid on canvas: She can blow on the paint with a digital tool, for example, and see the color drip as she works.

Enriquez’s palette is a range of blues, suggesting a fathomless sky and sea, along with lighter shades to create a sense of illumination.

The artist grew up in the Philippines capital city of Manila and remembers the onset of martial law under dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the early 1970s.

Her family applied for immigration visas and waited 10 years before they were allowed to move to the United States.

They came to live in the Seattle area, and Enriquez later went to the University of Washington to study art.

She learned traditional printmaking — and then dove into digital technology.

In recent years, she has exhibited her art at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, the Whidbey Art Gallery and the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, among other venues.

Enriquez said she’s inspired by her experiences as an immigrant, by her Filipino heritage and by her life in Anacortes.

She lives close to the city’s Community Forest Lands and walks among the trees often.

With her paintings, she hopes to impart the mystical feeling of the place.

In her demonstration on Sunday, Enriquez will show time-lapse videos of her artwork taking shape, and then, on her laptop computer, give people a chance to try their hand at digital painting.

The artist will answer questions about the pieces on view in the gallery and show some of her other works brought from her studio.

“What I value in my art — what makes digital painting important to my art — is getting that sense of the mystical, the atmospheric feeling,” Enriquez said.

She also explores the pre-colonial culture of the Philippines — its beliefs, stories and worldview — in her paintings.

“You may notice glyphs from an indigenous Philippine writing system in my work. You might see allusions to creatures from Philippine myth,” Enriquez noted.

Other pieces, such as “Agila Looking for Land,” hearken back to the feeling of traveling across an ocean to a new country and a new life.

Enriquez added that she hopes her art draws people in and invites them to reflect — on how we navigate between honoring our roots and creating something new.