What makes a great art fair experience? From a collector’s point of view, it is about expanding one’s view, finding community, and building relationships.

Those last two priorities had us worried about the tenth edition of the Seattle Art Fair. Several veteran galleries from Seattle and Portland had chosen to participate in a separate event six miles north. What would it mean if the local art community itself appeared divided? Would familiar faces still be there to greet us? Would the fair feel diminished?

With plenty of uncertainty and fear of missing out, we joined the Friday traffic on I-5 North.

Once we entered the fair, it quickly became clear that much of our concern was unnecessary. There was no shortage of galleries eager to engage with the Seattle art market. The booths filled the venue, and the aisles were busy. Here and there, we also saw several SAF Presents booths for self-represented artists, continuing a feature from previous editions. Before long, we had stopped thinking about the other fair entirely.

That sense of discovery began at Avery Barnes Gallery, an appointment-only gallery returning for its second year. Along with work by Cristina Martinez, whom the gallery presented during its inaugural participation, Avery Barnes brought a group of paintings by Nahom Ghirmay.

Ghirmay’s work reflects the long and tumultuous journey that took him from Asmara, Eritrea, to the United States. He thins warm pink acrylic paint until it behaves almost like a stain. The color moves through the paintings and gives the group a visual unity. Despite the somber subject matter, it also brings a feeling of warmth, humanity, and hope.

Two qualities coexist in these paintings. There is a fluid lyricism, with paint allowed to wander along its own course. At the same time, the flattened shapes and simplified compositions create a disciplined narrative structure. In one painting, a nude figure clings tightly to a white horse, suspended in an arid and barren landscape. The setting could hardly be farther from Seattle’s emerald green surroundings. Yet the image stirred a familiar feeling of nostalgia, perhaps shared by others who have left a home or a homeland (or an art fair) behind.

Ghirmay’s work also demonstrated why encountering art in person still matters. For galleries outside the Pacific Northwest, building relationships with local collectors can be difficult. Physical and tangible objects are often compressed into JPEGs and circulated through emails, websites, and social media. At an art fair, viewers can once again respond to scale, surface, color, and the physical presence of an artwork.

Of course, fairs also create their own pressure. In a hall with more than seventy galleries, every booth competes for attention. It is understandable that some exhibitors turn to work that is humorous, decorative, or deliberately kitsch. Such art catches the eye quickly, and sometimes it sells quickly as well.

It was therefore not surprising to encounter at least two versions of “Jimothy” the Seattle Raccoon that’s taken the Internet by storm, at the fair. We began to wonder whether any gallery would have the courage to bring a real raccoon next year.

Beyond the immediate humor and spectacle, several booths rewarded a slower kind of looking. At Base Camp Studios, we met Gabriel Zea, one of the artists represented by the fair’s many cooperative and studio-based exhibitors. Born in Houston and trained in New York, Zea recently moved to Seattle to be closer to his family.

His paintings are nearly monochromatic and often use sharply angled viewpoints, looking either upward from below or downward from above. Human figures occupy natural settings, but intense light sometimes washes out the surrounding details. At first, the eye is drawn toward flesh, light, and color. Only after adjusting does it begin to register Zea’s meticulous rendering of the landscape.

That delayed recognition creates tension between technical beauty and emotional danger. Across the body of work, something seems psychologically unsettled. The paintings brought Watteau to mind, particularly in their theatrical treatment of the human figure. Zea’s figures can appear as elegant and composed as those in a Baroque pastoral scene, yet the tilted perspectives and unnatural colors disturb that elegance. The landscape does not offer refuge. It seems to expose the figures even further.

That uneasy relationship between people and place also connects Zea’s contemporary paintings to a longer history of art in the region. We had just visited the Seattle Art Museum shortly before the fair, where Northwest Mysticism was still fresh in our minds. We were pleased to see Ancient Ground Gallery honor that tradition with work by the group sometimes known as the “Mystic Four.”

Mr. Crawford told us that nearly all the historical paintings had come through consignment from a single estate. Alongside the four artists, the gallery presented a drawing by William Cumming, which was sold while we were there, and two collages by Paul Horiuchi. The booth gave viewers a compact view of how spirituality, landscape, and abstraction became intertwined in the art of the Pacific Northwest.

Woodside Gallery offered another connection between the region’s artistic history and its legendary artists. Known for its deep inventory of mid-century painting, the gallery surprised us by placing a work by Portland artist Katherine Ace prominently on an exterior wall. Ace’s Nine Women has also been featured at the Portland Art Museum in a presentation highlighting women artists within Portland’s art community.

Before leaving, we stopped at Gallery 110. We have known David Houghton’s work for years, yet we still could not resist a small nocturnal seascape. A vertical beam of light passing through an industrial structure had a Whistlerian delicacy. The final traces of sunset, squeezed on the top of the panting, deepened the blue shadows in the foreground rather than dispersing them.

This was our fourth visit to the Seattle Art Fair, and while each year has brought its own highlights and disappointments, we’ve always come away believing it was time well spent.

It was at a previous Seattle Art Fair that we encountered Will Robinson’s floating granite sculpture at Foster/White Gallery, marveled at Jeff Gunn’s Near Shores and Far Shores—which the artist told us he considered the finest work he had ever created—and stood captivated by Humaira Abid’s astonishing hyper-realistic wood carving of a shirt at Greg Kucera Gallery. These artists may already have devoted followings, but what the Seattle Art Fair offers is something equally important: the chance to introduce their work to a broader audience. That audience includes young collectors who may not yet be ready to purchase, but whose curiosity and admiration become seedlings, nurtured through repeated exposure over the years until they grow into lifelong engagement with art.

That brings back to our initial hesitation against two fairs. It was disappointing this year to see a handful of local dealers participate in a separate event held during the same weekend. Satellite fairs are nothing new—the Affordable Art Fair series comes to mind—and they can add to the overall energy of an arts community. Traditionally, however, satellite fairs are not built around a region’s major local galleries.

Art fairs can also be fragile ventures. We’ve seen in places like Houston how competing fairs can divide audiences, galleries, and resources until neither event is strong enough to endure, sometimes leaving a region without a major art fair at all.

We hope galleries, organizers, and the broader arts community continue working together to build a vibrant, sustainable Seattle Art Fair that serves Seattle and the Pacific Northwest for many years to come.