NICHOLAS COLEY

THE APPARITION OF MONARCHS PAINTINGS OF THE BAY AREA

NICHOLAS COLEY

THE APPARITION OF MONARCHS: PAINTINGS OF THE BAY AREA

June 14th - July 26th

Bryant Street Gallery is pleased to announce The Apparition of Monarchs: Paintings of the Bay Area, a new exhibition of plein air landscapes by Nicholas Coley. Experience the many faces of the Bay Area coast on view from June 14th to July 26th. The gallery and the artist welcome the public to an opening reception on Saturday, April 29th, from 3-5 p.m.

Coley paints solely from life, setting up his canvas in the natural Bay Area environment that is featured throughout his works. He creates from dawn to dusk, completing each painting in a day. The resulting pieces uniquely capture an uninterrupted glimpse of the artist’s relationship to that day’s chosen setting. His process is a balancing act of observation and intuition, grounding tones and unexpected pigments, textures and layers that both bring the scene to life and accentuate painterly brush work. The fantastic and the ordinary are at play in each landscape, indicating the artist’s reverence for the colors and contours of the everyday world. His bold brushstrokes make shadows look carved out on hillsides, giving them the weight and substance they need to stand up with the parts that are hit by sun; where the gilded orange underpainting shines through the surface layers, making fields and branches glow. Vibrant blue skies look tangible, while cloudy oceans reveal depth under rippling waves. Coley’s familiarity with and careful observation of the coastline is evident in the immersive atmospheres he puts together.

Nicholas Coley was born in Connecticut and raised in Muir Beach, California. After high school he hitchhiked around the United States before moving to France, where he attended L’ecole Marchutz to study in the style of the Impressionists. He then joined a Buddhist monastery and traveled around Europe and Asia before settling down in the Bay Area. Upon emerging from his world wanderings, he returned to the area he grew up in with fresh eyes and a deep respect for the life brimming from all aspects of the physical world, from city streets to ocean horizons.

Coley’s work has appeared in numerous galleries all over the U.S. including the SFMoma Artists Gallery, St. Mary’s College, and the Berkeley Theological Seminary. He lives in Mill Valley with his family.

The Apparition of Monarchs: Paintings of the Bay Area will be on view at 532 Bryant Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301 from June 14th to July 26th. For more images and information please visit the website at www.bryantstreet.com or email us at bryantst@mac.com

Biography:

Nicholas Coley was born in Connecticut in 1971 and raised in Muir Beach, California. He hitch hiked around the states for a couple years after high school trying to find Don Juan and Carlos Castenada. He was sure he had a destiny to become a medicine man or a brujo, but after getting hepatitis in a hostel in Santa Fe, he moved to Europe and studied art at the Beaux-Arts plus another small school for painting in the south of France. He lived, studied, and meditated daily for a year in a Buddhist Monastery outside of Bordeaux. After reading 'The tropic of Capricorn' by Henry Miller, he decided he was not meant for the disciplined, monastic life and went off in search for a more creative and spontaneous world, taking him to Prague for a year and selling paintings to tourists on the Charles Bridge. From there he took the trans-Siberian railroad through Russia and deep into China before having a complete spiritual collapse in the summer of '94. The good news is it's been a slow climb back up the mountain toward the beneficence and belonging of a higher power. Anchored by the love of a good woman he's actually been able to support his family, three extraordinary little kids (and seven chickens) even putting a down payment on a house...all exclusively with the proceeds from painting sales, which he's damn proud of and still sort of in dumb happy shock. For almost 20 years now he has been painting full time, almost every day. Turns out, he was something of a medicine man after all.