A naturalist, environmental educator, wilderness adventurer and artist, Kim McNett’s creativity is a melding of scientific observation and curiosity and her love for the natural world. Keeping a nature journal to document her explorations and daily life in Kachemak Bay, she also teaches nature drawing, journaling and visual arts across the state.

“Fantastic Fens” is McNett’s exhibit that is on display at Bunnell Street Arts Center through February. Through watercolor paintings, oil paintings and pen and ink drawings, McNett showcases the world of fens, which she described as a special and important kind of wetland and peatland.

“Peatlands can be categorized into different classifications — bog, swamp, marsh and fen,” she said. “Peat is a substance of slow growth and deep time. The soggy layers of rich soil hold thousands of years of frog songs, moose tracks and the subtle work of sedge and moss that draw carbon from the air and lay it down in blankets of spongy earth.

“Most peat lands around the Homer area that we call bogs are actually fens. I love the word fen. To me, it sounds magical. On behalf of the wild nature that flourishes in these special wetlands, in this exhibit, I am exploring an emerging side of my artistic voice — expanding my science illustration into a realm of impression and imagination.”

In her watercolor painting, “Fantastic Fens” — the title of which is intended as a play on words from the film, “Fantastic Fungi” — McNett depicts a scaber stalk mushroom, red-backed vole, mourning cloak butterfly and reindeer lichen, all species she encounters in local fens.

“Even though you wouldn’t necessarily see these species together, I thought they would make a nice assemblage, and so I composed them in a way so you can see that they all live together in a fen,” she said.

Another watercolor painting, “Chlorophylled Forest,” shows a Pacific wren, turkey tail fungus, white-spotted sawyer beetle and ground cone.

“’Chlorophylled’ is a made-up word, meaning filled with chlorophyll and as such, this painting is all very green,” she said. “All the species I feature in all my paintings live in this area, but with this painting I took the liberty to depict them as more ethereal and mythical.

“Like with the wren, in reality they are brown, but I painted this one green because when I see them in a mossy forest, it feels like they fit that way, like the colors reflect the hues and are not as fixed as we may think they are. This painting is not an example of an iconic fen ecosystem, but the forested areas that surround the fens in our area.”

In this exhibit, McNett is also showing oil paintings for the first time. After painting in watercolors for the past 10 years, she only recently began painting with oils after being gifted her father-in-law’s oil painting supplies and taking an oil painting class from Anchorage artist David Pettibone.

“I feel like I’m carrying on my father-in-law’s creativity and legacy,” she said. “I’ve been loving this medium and looking forward to doing more.”

“Pond Lily” is an oil she painted from a photo she took last summer while exploring a local fen.

“Fully aquatic plants in a fen, like a pond lily, are special and important because they are holding and retaining a lot of the groundwater on the landscape,” she said.

This is McNett’s first time showing her oil paintings, a medium she practices both in Hawaii, where she and her husband, Bjorn Olson, spend a few months living and working the family farm each winter, and in Homer where she has lived since 2009. The couple met when McNett came to Homer to work as a seasonal environmental educator with the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies. Olson is also an artist and adventurer, and together the two embark on Alaska wilderness travel and nature immersion, including kayaking and biking. Wherever they go, McNett takes her journal along with her, drawing and melding her passions for wilderness and art and with a heart and mind for education and conservation.

Also on display in this exhibit are a series of McNett’s pen and ink drawings depicting various species of spruce trees.

“Trees are not part of a fen ecosystem, but I love drawing them and using the traditional style of scribble sketch,” she said.

While showcasing the beauty of nature in general and fens in particular, McNett also strives to draw attention to their importance to the landscape and those who inhabit it.

McNett called fens “valuable and precious,” noting that fens on the Kenai Peninsula are slowly drying out and shrinking as the forests are moving in. This impact can pose problems for both people and wildlife because fens help the landscape, among other ways, by slowing the spread of wildfire, recharging the aquifer for people’s drinking water, purifying the water and providing rearing habitat for small salmon fry like those that come up the Anchor River.

“Our biosphere is suffering as we face climate disruption, habitat loss and species extinction and often this is framed scientifically, like measuring ocean acidity or measuring sea loss. I think that what we need in order to change our attitude towards our natural world is going to come from the heart more than the mind,” she said. “It’s important to use our logic, but we also need to have a personal reason to value and understand it.

“What I hope is that in some small way my art can help evoke an emotional heightened state of love and compassion for nature and an impetus to want to defend and protect it. These peatlands provide vital essential ingredients for life. The fens have a powerful ability to protect wildness — for animals, insects, birds and even for our own hearts. I can hear their songs. They are inviting us to sing along.”

In April, “Fantastic Fens” will move to the Bear Gallery in Fairbanks, thanks to a career opportunity grant McNett received from the Alaska State Council on the Arts.

“There are a lot of peatlands across Alaska, and I’d like to share with other communities the beauty and inspiration they provide me,” she said.

Among McNett’s creative goals are continuing to develop her oil painting technique, working with the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve to create illustrations of the local peatlands for guidebooks, and facilitating a plankton work and show series. She will also be teaching nature journaling workshops and retreats this spring and summer in villages across the bay and around Homer, including at the Pratt Museum and the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies and during the Kachemak Bay Writer’s Conference.

“I love collaborating with everyone from scientists to artists to educators,” she said. “I enjoy learning about all the viewpoints and find it enriching and inspiring. I’m also grateful to this community for the Homer Drawdown Peatland project in 2019 and 2020, a community effort to put our important peatlands on the map.”

On display at the Homer Airport is a permanent installation of McNett’s watercolor-painted fens in print, supported by the Bunnell Street Arts Center and the City of Homer. The original paintings are featured in this exhibit.

In addition to “Fantastic Fens,” McNett is hosting a Winter Watercolor workshop series at Bunnell on Tuesdays. The first workshop was held Feb. 11, with the others taking place Feb. 18 and 25 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. In these workshops, McNett will teach how to convey the winter world in light, shadow, reflection and color. Space is limited to 12 participants per workshop and each class is $40. Register in-person at Bunnell, located at 106 W Bunnell Avenue, by phone at 907-235-2662 or online at bunnell-street-arts-center.square.site/tickets-workshops.

“Fantastic Fens” can be viewed during gallery hours, Mondays to Fridays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m.

Find McNett on Facebook and Instagram, and find more information about her workshops and multi-day retreats at kimsnaturedrawings.com.

“White Spruce,” a pen and ink drawing by Kim McNett, is one of numerous original works of art on display in her February exhibit, “Fantastic Fens,” at Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Kim McNett

“Fantastic Fen” is a watercolor painting by Kim McNett, on display in her solo exhibit through February at Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Kim McNett

”Pond Lily,” an oil painting by Kim McNett, is one of several works included in her February exhibit at Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska. Photo provided by Kim McNett