Portsmouth has even more scenic views than usual this summer with three galleries sharing a landscape theme in their August art exhibits.

The galleries, which held receptions during the city’s monthly Art ’Round Town event, include Nahcotta, Three Graces Gallery and the Kennedy Gallery, all within walking distance of each other downtown.    

Nahcotta’s “Landscape Show” is an annual event. Although the art has a theme in common, the seven featured artists are unique and diverse in their interpretations.

As winter caretaker of Star Island, Alexandra de Steiguer has a rare vantage point of the sea. She also has a true talent. Her haunting black and white photographs are imbued with starkness and solitude. Michael Winters also has black and white photographs on display, depicting summer with a girl obscured by sun rays.   

Jeffrey Fitzgerald explores the East Coast landscape as part of his past and memory, using sense as a guide. The abstract paintings of Sam Faix are predominantly born from his recollection of destinations visited, including New Hampshire’s coastal Route 1A. These recent paintings are tactile and patterned and while the locations may not be recognizable, there’s a definite sense of a place.  

New to the show, Amy Greenan paints abandoned houses, places that carry a history and an undetermined future. Through obscured notations and paint drips, these works explore physical structures and the emotional tumult, both real and imagined, that might occur there. The romantic pastoral landscapes of Rich Gombar and the soft, vibrant acrylics and pastels of Teresa McCue, both of whom participated last year, round out the selections.

The exhibit at Three Graces, “Luminous Landscape,” features new encaustic paintings by Linda Cordner, Charyl Weissbach, Janet Bartlett Goodman and Tracy Spadafora. Encaustic painting is an ancient technique using a pigmented wax mixture that results in a multilayered, glowing surface.

Linda Cordner says creating organic forms is a natural extension of wax’s origin. Having been a graphic designer, she is drawn to certain color schemes and shapes, repetition and placement. She uses collage that can be seen through layers of wax or incised patterns and lines.

Janet Bartlett Goodman’s background as an industrial designer and her eye for color, line and form comes through in her artwork. In some of the works, the viewer is invited to wander in, but in the ones with grids, the viewer sits outside the scene, and the image is allowed to stand alone.

Tracy Spadafora is exhibiting paintings from her “Persistance of Nature” series. Encaustics allow for layering obscured images and preserve them underneath the surface, a technique that the artists says gives it meaning into the realms of memory and intuition.

In these works, the natural and man-made converge and collide, showing the struggle between these opposing forces. “With these paintings I intend to convey a sense of the poetry and endurance of nature as a force,” she says in her artist statement.

Charyl Weissbach is inspired by color, texture, and light placed within familiar settings such as a landscape or seascape. “These locations contain intriguing compositions, color rich in texture and unusual shapes that, in collaboration, emit an aesthetic sensation of harmony, and the illusion of timelessness,” she says in an artist statement.

Her work is not an accurate representation of nature, but conveys its mysterious allure.

“I derive great pleasure from satisfying a viewer’s yearning for visualizing the complexity and beauty of our natural surroundings,” Weissback says.

Landscape paintings by Christopher Volpe are on display at the Kennedy Gallery in a show titled “Mystical Moods.” He often creates dream-like moods and visions by capturing nature in transitional states of dusk and dawn.

There is reference to traditional landscapes, but filtered through a contemporary sensibility. Much of the paintings come out of memory or imaginative literature and are often near abstract with the blurry quality of driving at night or forgetting one’s glasses. He tends to use a tonal palette, setting dark silhouettes against luminous skies. With this stylized approach, Volpe’s work exudes emotion.

While Volpe has previously shown his New England landscapes with lonely trees, abandoned paths and ominous clouds, this exhibit shows a lighter side. Several of the paintings, appearing to have been painted en plein air, are surprisingly brighter and of scenes more familiar to the Seacoast. There are even a couple of still life paintings with fruit.

Nahcotta is at 110 Congress St., 603-433-1705. Three Graces is at 105 Market St., 603-436-1988. Kennedy Gallery and Framing is at 41 Market St., 436-7007.