Roby King Gallery will present a solo exhibition by painter and printmaker Kris Ekstrand in October.

The new show opens during the First Friday Art Walk. An artist’s reception is planned for 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 4 at the gallery.

Ekstrand lives in the Skagit Valley area and works out of her studio in Edison.

“This new work focuses on the ‘lines’ drawn between land and water, past and present, memory and intuition: my territory,” the artist explained.

Her series of monotypes entitled “Visible Bones: Samish Flats Series” explores her emotional response to her local landscape. With a nod to friend and naturalist writer Jack Nisbet for the title, his writings have clarified her own response to the brooding estuarine tidelands and farmland of the Skagit Valley.

“The landscape here carries a powerful sense of time for me and reminds me daily that we are living in only a dot on a vast, ancient continuum,” she said.

As a collector of bird nests, Ekstrand is keenly interested in the energy, centrifugal force and gravity of these objects: “They represent shelter, refuge and loss: so fragile yet so strong. One ‘line’ at a time.”

Roby King Gallery is located at 176 Winslow Way East. The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, and noon to 4 p.m. Sundays.

For more information, call 206-842-2063 or visit www.robykinggallery.com.