Astoria artist Sara Moen with three of her charcoal drawings that feature stumps. Moen has recently shown work at a handful of local galleries.

On a day with decent weather, there’s a good chance Astoria artist Sara Moen is set up with an easel along a nearby trail.

Moen, who has shown artwork at various local galleries, brings regional landscapes — with subjects that include wetland sloughs and stumps covered in dense foliage — to life by drawing using charcoal on wood.

“It’s got that simplicity that seems particularly peaceful right now,” Moen said of drawing with charcoal.

Her careful attention to detail can be seen in the capturing of individual blades of grass or tiny ferns sprouting from a nurse log.

“I feel like I just tapped into something I didn’t know I could do,” she said. “I have a lot of patience to bring it out, and the quality of charcoal has a lot of life in it. Charcoal comes from wood.”

Moen started drawing in pencil, but found herself looking for darker colors and tones. She eventually landed on using charcoal, and now fashions wood bases from spare plywood.

“I also thought it would be great to do drawings you didn’t have to put glass over,” Moen said.

She cuts the wood pieces herself, which has given her a chance to hone in on some woodworking skills. After sanding down the base layer, she seals the piece, tapes off a border and gets to drawing.

Many of her pieces are en plein air, landscapes drawn from life outdoors.

“I go out and spend quite a bit of time figuring out what I want to draw and what the composition is,” she said.

Learning about her surroundings and absorbing the sounds, textures and atmospheres of the scenes she draws is a vital part of Moen’s creative process.

In one recent series at Cambium Gallery in Astoria, titled “Adjacent/Adjoining,” she showed six drawings from wetlands at the southern end of Willapa Bay in southwest Washington state.

The series was a nod to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that curtailed protections for wetlands, Moen explained. She didn’t notice much attention being given to the ruling and wanted to explore that in her pieces.

Moen’s recent drawings of nurse logs were inspired by stumps she found along Gnat Creek Trail within the Clatsop State Forest. For future projects, she has her eye on capturing more nurse logs and surrounding ecosystems.

“There are some ones that look like old, mythical sea creatures. They go around and around like Celtic knots,” she said.

Moen found her love for drawing after joining an art group in Astoria, where she’s lived for about seven years.

“I wanted to get into drawing as a way to get the creative juices flowing again,” she said.

Charcoal’s simplicity was a part of the pull. There are no colors to hassle with, just black and white artwork. Moen also said she knows herself to be detail-oriented, something reflected in her time working with sewing and textiles before she dived into drawing.

“I realize now I’ve been somewhat of a dabbler, but now I feel like I found my thing with this,” she said. “It’s just so uncomplicated.”

In addition to the show at Cambium, Moen’s work has appeared in two recent exhibits at Astoria Visual Arts, “Divine Beacons” and “Secrets of the Slow Dimension.” She also has an ongoing collection of work on display at Made in Astoria, a gallery that opened in July on Commercial Street.

“It’s neat to think about putting together a series for a show and a particular space,” she said.

Made in Astoria has a drawing on display from Moen’s stump series, and two from the wetlands at Willapa Bay. She also said she’ll be adding smaller, one-off pieces in the coming months.

Later in the year, she plans to have a showing at Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita.

Find more of Moen’s artwork

Find more of

Moen’s artwork

Made in Astoria,

1269 Commercial St., Astoria

@moen.sara

www.saramoenart.com