“Red,” the group show opening Friday at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts, features a galaxy of works in which the fiery palette predominates.

A range of crafts and fine art will hang for the first of the gallery’s new six-week exhibits. At the fine arts end of the spectrum are Sharon Strauss’ paintings.

Exhibition of the six abstract oils, while not exactly a Bainbridge debut for Strauss, who hung works at BPA last year, marks the first time a body of the work has been seen together.

“I am happy because the work is being shown in my community,” Strauss. “I’m happy because of that.”

The paintings, with their warm-toned horizontal bands, inevitably invoke landscape – but Strauss has deliberately squared the canvasses, rather than extend them horizontally, a move that would have emphasized the landscape reference.

Strauss begins with color, letting the composition flow from her selection of a few colors, which she “neutralizes” with a complementary.

“It helps integrate the painting,” Strauss said.

“I mix all my own colors. Nothing is out of a tube.”

Strauss purchases moderately priced pigments like cadmium red, ultramarine blue and viridian green under the label put out by Seattle art supply store Daniel Smith.

“If I could afford the most expensive paints,” Strauss said, “that’s what I’d be using. I’m a color freak.

“On the other hand, having to make do with a simple palette is very good discipline.”

Painting two canvasses at once, Strauss takes advantage of the extended working time that slow-drying oil paint affords.

“I use, on average, 30 brushes,” Strauss said. “I use my fingers. I use nails and pencils and anything else I have on hand to get the effect.”

Strauss works to build both light and movement into the painting.

Working in oils allows her to build the layers that inject light into the work, she says.

The three “Harbinger” paintings in the “Red” show have diagonal lines that bisect the layers, a kind of drawing-in-paint that carries the eye through the layers of color and seems as spontaneous as a gesture drawing.

In the most recent painting shown, “Conversation,” it is the linear quality that Strauss chooses to emphasize over landscape reference.

That is, Strauss says, the new direction of her work.

Drawing has always inspired this artist.

Figurative drawing, which Strauss both teaches and pursues, opened the door to making art for Strauss when she felt stymied a decade ago.

“I always thought of myself as a creative person,” Strauss said, “but about 10 years ago, I felt like I was losing it.”

Strauss, whose two children were in elementary school at the time, was running a busy residential appraisal business from her home.

Then she drew up plans for her own house remodel.

The creative exercise opened the door to more drawing and Strauss began to work from the figure.

“I can’t even describe how excited I was,” Strauss said. “I became extremely exhilarated because I was creative again.”

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Wear red for the opening of Bainbridge Arts and Crafts’ “Red” exhibit 6 p.m. February 14. From Elizabeth Moga’s richly painted La Conner flower field paintings to PC Harper’s boots and Cynthia Dice’s crabs and chickens, the theme is a red-hot palette. The art of Carol D’Inverno, Caroline Cooley Browne; Andree Carter; Cynthia Dice; Garth Edwards; Wade Garretson; Michael Green; PC Harper; Victoria Josslin; Nana Kuo; Elizabeth Moga; Sally Prangley and Sharon Strauss warms BAC galleries Feb. 14-March 30. Call 842-3132 for more information.