Evergreen Member Spotlight: The Art and Flow of Darcie Gray

Story by Keller Northcutt
Studio Photos by Elijah Christie

Darcie Gray is radiant—beachy, easy-going, creative, and endlessly pursuing her passions. From apparel designer to muralist, a globetrotter, a kiteboard instructor, as well as a surfer, skier, biker, and skateboarder, Darcie’s approach to life parallels her mantra for kiting: 

“Do it while you can, because you never know when the wind will blow.” 

As her art grew over the last six years from palm-sized paintings to multi-story murals, Darcie shows us that the best way to progress in anything, whether it is a sport, fitness, or art, is to simply take one step at a time. We were lucky to catch her in a rare moment of stillness for an interview in her cozy attic studio in the Sunnyland neighborhood, and we are excited to share her story for our next Evergreen Strength Member Spotlight!

Darcie and her three-legged sidekick Tom at Range Design Studio in the Sunnyland Neighborhood.

Darcie is one of the rare born-and-raised Bellingham natives (who attended to the same elementary school as Coach Elijah). She grew up sailing out in the bay and learned to windsurf in college. After walking into an outdoor gear shop to buy a pair of skis, the owner handed her a kiteboarding magazine, and she remembers flipping through it and thinking, “Well that looks like a lot more fun than windsurfing.” She quickly learned to kiteboard, and five years later she became an instructor. 

“Kiting is an extremely dynamic sport, you can never rest. You are constantly steering, constantly in motion, so you have to let go of anything that is on your mind and stay present.” 

This flow state has always appealed to Darcie. She earned a degree in apparel design from the Art Institute of Seattle and worked for REI, but it didn’t take long for the corporate world to lose its luster, so she decided to quit her job and move to Baja to teach kiteboarding. She lived there for 6 months, enjoying the ebb and flow of a calmer life. She continued to let the wind pull her and traveled for another year, landing in places like Greece, New Zealand, the Grand Canyon, and eventually the Tetons in Wyoming. Naturally, waves and mountains were her favorite muses, and she started painting again after a long hiatus. 

When COVID hit, she had a handful of small 6”x6” paintings, mostly of the Tetons, that she decided to post to social media and see if she could sell them. Within 24 hours, all of them sold, cracking open the idea that perhaps she could pursue art again. Shortly after her sale a friend asked if she would do a 9”x12” painting on wood. “It felt like a big project,” she laughed. But each time she tried a bigger project, she expanded and developed her confidence as an artist.

Darcie moved back to Bellingham in April of 2021 to be close to family, and that summer a friend asked if she wanted to do a backyard art pop-up event. People were hungry for community and connection post-pandemic, and it motivated her to get out the paints. Her friend made earrings, she painted a few small pieces, and they had a perfect summer soiree. It was one of the first times she realized how much art brings people together, and she began to crave more.

Over the next few years, Darcie continued to create art while working at restaurants to pay the bills. Every place she worked the managers wanted to show her art, and it slowly began to spread. She got a show at Vital, the climbing gym, then Aslan Brewery. Other breweries and restaurants started asking for her art as well. In 2023, she started working at Rock and Rye, and that was the first place she directly had the opportunity to interact with her art and customers. At first she was concerned about always being around her art, noticing imperfections or aspects she would do differently, but eventually this opened her eyes as an opportunity to let go of the outcome.

“I discovered that I enjoy painting for people who love my work rather than painting for myself. The pieces I love the most often stay the longest, and I’ve learned that my art has to resonate with others.” 

Greeting cards, earrings, skateboard decks, and dog collars are just a few of the other items Darcie paints.

While at Rock and Rye, Darcie was able to have conversations with people about her art, learn what they admired, and see their reaction to certain pieces. She felt lucky to watch people finish their dinner and then purchase her art to take home with them. With a background also in marketing, she feels it is ok to paint for other people, that it allows her to sit with her work more easily.

“I am not as critical of my pieces as I used to be. I love my artwork. If I didn’t I could not be around it all the time.”

Her art captures the essence of the Pacific Northwest– deep, dark green forests, moonlit alpine lakes, glacier-blue peaks, grey fog-wrapped hillsides. Her palette is distinctly her own, a signature in and of itself. When she needs inspiration for scale or scope, all she has to do is open her door and step into the mountains. 

“I pretty much always use blues, greens, black and white, and every time I try to add another color it just doesn’t work,” she laughed.  

Darcie isn’t afraid to go big. (Photo by Aaron Knapp)

Darcie conquered another milestone when she opened her first brick and mortar studio in fall of 2023 in downtown Bellingham. She finally had a space designated solely for painting and creativity. She transitioned to a collaborative artist space in the Sunnyland neighborhood in February of 2025, and loves having a storefront for people to shop and visit. They open their doors for community events as well, such as the Sunnyland Stomp and monthly artwalks, which helps increase her reach and meet new people.

Evergreen was also a lucky recipient of her art. We hired Darcie to paint a mural in the gym in 2024, and within a matter of days, she transformed our space with a wall of apropos evergreens, dense and vanishing into the distance, adding a natural connection to the space. Her art reminds us why we go to the gym in the first place—so we can keep playing outside as long as possible.

Darcie wanted to find a new gym when she moved back to Bellingham, but none of them quite met her needs. Luckily a friend (thanks Molly McAtee!) convinced her to give a class a try. Darcie wanted the right balance of strength training and functional movements, programming that would improve her kiting and personal fitness. After her first class, she was hooked, and now she regularly uses Evergreen to supplement her active lifestyle. 

Darcie preps paint cans on a downtown Bellingham mural. (Photo by Kris Gray)

“Evergeen fills the gaps between all the activities I do. It finds the muscles and movement patterns that are missing and addresses them. I love if I have a big cardio weekend, I can still go to class and get strength training.”

Darcie stated that kiteboarding is 90% core and 10% legs, and kiting sessions last up to 3 hours. She needs strength, power, and endurance. With the harness around her waist and the board under her feet, she drives the kite in a delicate balance of wind and waves. But like most board sports, kiteboarding is directional and she finds the unilateral work at Evergreen a great way to restore balance in her body.

She needs mobility and strength as an artist just as much as a kiting instructor. As she has progressed to painting murals, she hauls paint and ladders up walls, climbs scaffolding, balances on small platforms, and traverses a wall for days or weeks of painting.

“I’ve been going to Evergreen for a year and half, and I can feel myself getting stronger. I can do more laps biking and skiing than I used to. I need less time to get my body warmed up, and I also have more endurance and less fatigue while kiting or doing large-scale paintings.” 

Progression is a beautiful common thread among art, fitness, and outdoor activities. We can only take one step at a time. Darcie said she would have not had the confidence to paint a mural when she was still only painting small pieces. Elijah noted he would have been overwhelmed to be the business owner he is now, had he been dropped right into it 5 years ago. No one walks into the gym for the first time and automatically performs lifts with perfect form. Everything is about progression.

“In mountain biking you do a small drop, you see how it feels. Then you do a bigger one, and slowly work your way up. It is same with art, you slowly do bigger pieces and bigger shows, and you build you confidence along the way,” Darcie explains.

The same is true in the gym. On day one, people are lost. They grab the smallest weights, watch others, and do their best to learn how to do the movements. But eventually, often without realizing it, they are soon grabbing bigger weights, moving faster in metcons, and perfecting their movements. Their confidence and strength grow.

“When you are trying to create a long term habit, you don’t need to bring all your energy every time, you can go slowly. Accepting this gives you the ability to be where you’re at each day. Some days you are ready to push it, but most days are just maintenance, and that’s how we progress,” noted Elijah. 

Always a smile when she’s steering a kite. (Photo by Aaron Knapp)

Whether kiteboarding, painting, or lifting weights, every aspect of Darcie’s life offers a creative connection. It is about how we let it flow, how we observe our bodies or the conditions of the day, and how we decide what to do with our time. Some days we need to rest and reboot so that we can return with more creativity or more power. “You can’t force it,” said Darcie. 

When kiting in the bay at golden hour, looking back at the city where she lives with Mount Baker standing guard, Darcie feels a deep connection between the creative and physical realms. Inspiration is all around us, and we have to let nature and our bodies guide us. 

Darcie and Tom soak up the sun on the porch of Mercantile Martini.

Moving forward, Darcie hopes to create more public art for the community. Having now completed a number of large-scale projects and murals around Bellingham, she loves the way they connect people to places.

“It is the most gratifying and rewarding part of making art—sharing the process and the results with others.”

Art unites us. It gently reminds us how to enjoy the process of growing and learning, knowing that perfection doesn’t happen overnight. Whether in the mountains, the gym, or out on the water, there is inspiration available to us every single day. Our progress as artists, athletes, and humans should be celebrated together, because as Darcie shows us, the joy is in the journey.





To view more of Darcie’s Art, visit her website Range Design Studio.
To book a kiteboarding lesson with Darcie, visit Bellingham’s Kite Paddle Surf shop or book online!