Jennifer Coates’ vividly colored, Symbolist-like paintings utilize the conventions of landscape as an anchor for hallucinatory visions that reference the mind and the body simultaneously. Expanses of sky or sea coalesce into pools of thought-like reflection; clouds of geometry warp into an ecstatic vortex; horizons fissure and swell like skin; and intricate vines tangle into knots of energized ganglia. Coates contrasts an atmospheric radiance with meticulous detail, iconic directness with allusive abstraction. Varied painterly approaches are positioned against each other to create a disjunctive but idealistic experience of place.

Coates lives and works in New York City, where she has exhibited frequently, with this being her second solo exhibition. She teaches at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and often writes on art.

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