Alaska artist splashes nautical charts with sea life
Published 12:00 pm Monday, December 8, 2025
Just up the hill from the Gastineau Channel, artist Brenda Schwartz-Yeager presented a new collection of maritime paintings during Friday’s Gallery Walk. Her latest watercolors are on display at Annie Kaill’s Gifts & Gallery.
Annie Kaill’s — one of more than 50 local businesses and organizations featured in the annual event — is celebrating its 50th year. Schwartz-Yeager said of the over 35 years she’s presented at the gallery, this year was a particular honor.
Many of her paintings are layered in semi-translucent watercolor directly onto National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration navigational charts. The distinct blue-and-yellow maps become a backdrop for breaching whales, fishing boats and other scenes pulled straight from the sea.
Schwartz-Yeager grew up commercial fishing, and still trolls and longlines. She’s also licensed captain, running tour boats and other vessels.
“For me, the charts are a tool of the trade, but every time I look at a chart, I’m really imagining some memory of some place I was or some place I want to go,” Schwartz-Yeager said.
Schwartz-Yeager lives in Wrangell, but paints up and down the coast, from Southeast Alaska to Prince William Sound to Homer. She spent much of the fall working in Juneau ahead of her show. One new piece depicts local boats preparing for the recent red crab opener.
She says her paintings try to capture a moment in time. She’ll take a NOAA chart to a location depicted on it, painting over top whatever she sees there, weather permitting.
“I’ve just seen countless, beautiful scenes on the coast of Alaska and they stick in my head, and I feel somehow provoked to try to put them on paper, the way maybe some people write a song or a poem or something like that. [I’ll] come around the corner in some bay on some boat I’m running, and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, look at that. Grab a sketchbook.’”
The gallery carries her prints year-round. Unsold originals from this new collection will remain in the shop for the month of December and into the new year.
