Curtis R. Barnes tries to make nice, peaceful, nonpolitical art, but something always happens to make it intense, tough, turbulent. Barnes has been making art in Seattle since he was 3 years old, and he’s about to be 71. It’s fitting that the Frye, where he took art classes as a child, has organized his first museum show, featuring paintings, drawings, sculptures, and a room devoted to the Omowale mural that energized the African American part of this city—and then was shamefully destroyed. Barnes’s art is like that Frye-owned painting he saw way back, of the horses fleeing the stable on fire: Real life feels at stake in it. (Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave, fryemuseum.org, 11 am–5 pm, free, through Sept 21)