Poet and painter exhibit the fruits of an Irish romance.

One medium may be words, and the other paint, but the works are as intertwined as the artists who made them.

An exhibit of landscapes and poems at Gallery Fraga showcases the creative pairing of painter Josie Gray and poet Tess Gallagher – both in work and in life.

“We made these paintings together,” Gallagher said. “We paint, because I talk to him about them every morning.”

The couple came together after the death of cherished partners.

Gallagher had lived in Port Angeles with famed short story writer Ray Carver for a decade, until Carver’s death in 1988.

Gray had raised a family of eight children in Ireland with his wife, Madge, until she died.

How Gallagher and Gray found each other is a tale of three decades, with roots in the turbulent 1960s, when Gallagher, in despair over the Vietnam War, left the States for England.

“I left to escape the body bag count,” she said. “I sold chocolates and programs in London’s theater district.”

There, she met Gray’s youngest sister, who invited her to visit Ireland and stay with her older sister, Eileen McDonagh, in County Sligo on Ireland’s northwest coast.

The several-day visit with McDonagh and her children was such a success that Gallagher rented a trailer, parking it near the Ballandrome Abbey and an adjacent cemetery.

There she wrote poetry.

McDonagh’s children mentioned a favorite uncle, Josie, but Gallagher didn’t meet Gray, who lived in County Wexford in Ireland’s southeast corner.

Gallagher returned to Ireland every year, penning a second book of poems there in 1976.

In 1977, Gallagher met Carver and the two moved in together in Gallagher’s Port Angeles home about a year later.

After his death, Gallagher mourned, letting half a year elapse before resuming work.

For the next seven years, she published, kept up with friends and managed Carver’s estate.

“I own all the copyrights,” she said. “We have an agency that handles both our work. All the foreign agents and translators deal directly with me.”

And, once a year, she revisited Ireland and the McDonaghs – but still never crossed paths with Gray.

F inally, in 1994, the family gave her a gentle shove in his direction.

“His niece, Marese McDonagh, asked me ‘Aren’t you ready for some company?’” Gallagher recalled. “I said, ‘If I was going to have someone, they’d need to be able to trim the tree in front of my view.’ She said, ‘If you can just forget about the tree, would you ever take a look at our Josie?”

Gallagher was both charmed and impressed by the versatile Irishman. To support his large family, Gray had done jobs from butcher to “rate collector,” the British Isles’ version of the IRS. Gallagher learned that Gray managed to keep in his neighbors’ good graces, even collecting tax money door to door.

He told her about the pub he had owned and the land he had farmed.

Gallagher taped and transcribed Gray’s stories over six years, a process she calls “a kind of courtship.”

Gallagher found the tapes “captivating”; Gray’s recollections were rich with humor and village lore – as well as more personal recollections of his late wife.

“I got to know her through the stories,” Gallagher said. “We’ve got two ghosts. We honor, very much, our partners.”

Gray had never painted – never, in fact, seen the inside of a museum or art gallery – but, inspired by Gallagher’s interest, he began to produce small-scale, visionary landscapes in gouache.

He painted when he stayed with Gallagher for extended visits, and he continued when he returned to Ireland.

His visual images evoked Gallagher’s poems, and Gallagher’s words inspired more paintings.

At the heart of the relationship is a unique creative process that consists of far more than merely working side by side.

The pair title paintings together, often in the Irish that neither can pronounce but both love, like “Da Mbeidis Ann Fein, Ni Bhfaighimi Iad,” which translates to “Even If They Were There, We Would Not Find Them.”

Gallagher’s description reveals the stimulus to her own imagination:

“The painting is of a mysterious violet cave lit by a blue light inside, with very frilly, yellow-ochre trees, and right down the center a gorgeous blue funnel going down toward this cave. It’s a very secret, beautiful alcove that contains something, not a forest.”

This year will mark a decade together. Both Gray and Gallagher hope for more years.

“Don’t we have the most extraordinary luck, or grace?” Gallagher said. “But it (partnership) was well prepared for, because I had it with Ray.

“That’s the first step, knowing what you want in your life and then drawing it to you.”