Intuition guides Timothy Haslet’s paintbrush and unorthodox choice of paint.

Haslet, Penn Cove Gallery’s featured artist for the month of October, is reinterpreting Whidbey scenery through the lens of impressionism and infusing his landscapes with a newfound vitality through his use of glowing paint. His goal? Getting viewers of his work to submit to their senses.

“Our hearts know a lot more than our heads do, oftentimes,” he said, perched before a canvas inside his studio on a balmy Thursday morning.

Art is in Haslet’s blood. He spent time in Issaquah and Seattle growing up, raised by adoptive parents who made art classes a priority in his and his twin brother’s childhoods; his adoptive parents knew their sons’ biological parents were artists, Haslet explained. While earning his bachelor’s degree in the arts — drawing, painting and printmaking —from Whitworth University in Spokane, Haslet spent three months in France. Overseas, he often sketched the work on display at museums, something of an exercise in reverse engineering.

“When you’re really, actively looking at a painting,” he said, “you understand more how it was put together. It really feels like a conversation with the artist.”

Haslet moved to Whidbey in 2000 shortly after graduating. Rather than immediately pursue a career in the arts, he took up landscaping and has continued ever since. He joined the Penn Cove Gallery seven years ago, became its president three years ago and focused on his art full-time over the last couple years. Haslet sells originals and commissions and participates in various art shows around Western Washington.

Despite having never participated in a gallery before, the “risk” Haslet said he took in joining Penn Cove Gallery paid off.

“This is my best year yet, business-wise,” he said, adding he is merely a painting or so shy from already making what he made in total selling his work last year.

Whereas some may dismiss his work for being gimmicky, the subversive color palettes of Haslet’s paintings are their selling point and a style he embraced out of necessity.

During a recent Whidbey Island Plein Air Paint Out, Haslet, desperate for a pop of color in his depiction of an otherwise dreary gray day, heeded instinct reaching for some neon pink paint. It was love at first sight.

“I just loved how it glowed through there,” he recalled.

Glow is exactly what Haslet’s work does, and harnessing such intense lighting is something he has spent the last two years experimenting with.

A frequent technique of his is painting over a neon acrylic base with heavy brushstrokes of greens, blues and browns, then “scratching” and “ragging” away the top layer, he said, allowing the neon paint to seep through the way light seeps through dense forests and patchy clouds. Tinting the rest of his palette accordingly prevents the neon from appearing unnatural.

Mixing glow-in-the-dark paint into his neutrals is another technique of Haslet’s, giving his paintings a radiance no matter what light they are viewed in.

Diagonal brushstrokes and blurred lines further imbue Haslet’s paintings with dynamism and render the totality of the image undecipherable until observed from a distance. Prompting the instinctual, split-second ability of the eyes and brain to piece together an image is what Haslet is after, an unconscious process which exemplifies his prioritization of feeling over thinking.

Involving familiar landscapes in this process allows more of the viewer’s memories to play a role in how they emotionally receive the painting as well.

“My main goal is to have it be realism from a distance, but more abstract up close. And when people are connecting the dots to create the image, that makes it even more interactive again,” he said. “When your eyes get to complete the picture, be it visually with shapes or with memory, having your own memory attached to it, then it’s that much more compelling, interesting, (there is) that much more mystery to it.”

Haslet recalled several people weeping at his paintings upon sight, something he called a “life achievement.”

“It’s kind of like theater where you can’t be an actor without an audience. You need that give and take,” he said. “The artist’s feeling (is) like a tool, a vessel, but it’s not all me.”

Bask in the glow of Haslet’s work at Penn Cove Gallery, open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. See more from him at timothyhaslet.com.

(Photo by Allyson Ballard) Dynamism and intuition are core tenets of Penn Cove Gallery artist Timothy Haslet’s work.

(Photo by Allyson Ballard) Haslet’s landscaping experience means he is intimately familiar with the Whidbey scenery he so frequently paints.

(Photos by Allyson Ballard) In some of his work, Haslet harnesses light through the strategic application of neon paint, often layered first.

(Photo by Allyson Ballard) Haslet used a small palette and worked slowly, guided by a reference image on his phone.