• Pamela Polston ©️ Seven Days
• "This World Otherword" by Chelsea Granger

Northern Daughters gallerists Sophie Pickens and Justine Jackson center their end-of-year show, titled "Solace," on a question: "What do you turn to?" Initially they asked their artists to explore, as they created new works, the idea of seeking and finding comfort. Perhaps it's not surprising that artists turn to, well, making more art. Endless creativity is arguably its own reward.

"Most artists make art as a form of solace," Pickens observed during a visit to the Vergennes gallery.

But the question is relevant to viewers, too. Why are we drawn to the visual bounty of a gallery or museum? Which artworks seem to speak to us personally? What is this mysterious connection between art and heart?

• Pamela Polston ©️ Seven Days
• "A Memory of Missing Things" by Bonnie Baird

Of course, we can enjoy looking at art without getting all meta about it. Sometimes it's enough to think, Damn, that's really good.

Pickens responded to her own query in a thoughtful gallery statement. "This exhibit was conceived to honor all of the ways that art supports us as human beings," she wrote. "The world is complicated and its beauty and terror alike can overwhelm. Living with artwork helps me stay in awe of the beauty and mystery every day."

To own a gallery, present exhibitions and literally look at work all the time is next-level art appreciation. But even visitors dropping in on a whim can find something to like in "Solace." That's because the nine artists — all women, as it happens — possess exceedingly different visions.

• Pamela Polston ©️ Seven Days
• "Do Tell" by Pamela Smith

Fans of Anne Cady, who is known for painting stylized landscapes in heightened hues, may be surprised to see three large geometric abstractions — her first three ever, Pickens clarified. Pamela Smith's winsome folk-art paintings sweetly evoke fairy tales and idealized intersections of humans and animals. Bonnie Baird's moody landscapes and Hannah Sessions' goat-forward farmscapes are reassuringly grounded in a sense of place.

In addition to six gallery regulars, Pickens said, "Solace" introduces three artists new to Northern Daughters.

• Pamela Polston ©️ Seven Days
• "Bathers in the Swamp No. 2" by Jessica Parker Foley

Chelsea Granger's gouache and flashe works on paper have a strong graphic appeal, and something else: ghostlike forms that suggest the presence of spirits. Granger created the paintings as a way to work through grief, Pickens said, following the deaths of her mother and a close friend. Jessica Parker Foley also paints in gouache and creates ambiguous settings in which figures look like cutout silhouettes. Carla Weeks' small oil paintings are geometric, monochromatic studies in primarily ultramarine. The shade is so intense, it seems to have its own magnetic field.

Color is one way to speak to the senses; imagery that invites us to imagine other worlds is another. "My feeling is that art can provide us all with an outlet, a refuge or at least some solace," Jackson writes in the gallery statement. "Art can be a place to go and feel and explore or escape or return to."

"Solace" is on view through January 31.