I must have passed nearly a million trees as I drove past Walden Pond en route to the broad granite steps of owner/photographer Jennifer M. Johnston’s Three Stones Gallery in West Concord.

I was in the mood for nature and art and had come to the right place. Three Stones Gallery, having just passed its first anniversary, is young and feisty, like the growing center into which it’s snuggled – an eclectic mix of eateries, outdoor outfitters and, if you happen to be between appointments, a huge window onto the dancing figures of the “Marx Fencing Academy.”

I walked into a warm greeting in a spare, high-ceilinged gallery where its current exhibition, “4artists | 4brushes,” was winding down with a flourish (it closes November 6). What I particularly liked was that instead of competing or repeating, these “brushes” seemed inspired to take up where the others left off, exploring an angle yet unexplored.

Jonathan MacAdam attracted my eye with vistas lit by single trees and streams that plumbed deep perspectives under a low horizon, their intriguing details appearing in the leaves and grass, air and clouds.

George Herman, on the other hand, practices a technique he calls “scrap- page” that brings your nose, will you or not, close to a picture plane overlaid with images where scale depends not on perspective but on which part of which object scraping reveals or conceals.

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