Thanks for everyone who came out to enjoy the “Let’s Go and Enjoy” show at the Dare County Arts Council in Manteo, NC over the past few weeks. I was pretty excited to see it was written about in OUTER BANKS NOW. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“Physicists teach that life is motion. All life. Even a sedentary rock.
Gloria Coker reveals the motion of everyday scenes, people and objects in her paintings to celebrate the underlying rhythm of life. In her own words, Coker’s paintings of musicians, dancers and beach and street scenes appear more like videos than static images.
The work of the Virginia artist is on display at the Dare County Arts Council through Wednesday, Nov. 6.
Thirty-five acrylic paintings fill the upstairs gallery of the Manteo venue. They call to the viewer to listen to a saxophone, watch as children splash in the ocean, feel the rhythm as a tango unfolds and sense the air rushing by as bicyclists race through an explosion of color and lively brush strokes.
Some works appear fully abstract while others merge abstraction with impressionism to reveal swirling dresses, strumming hands, and collective and contemplative faces of performing musicians.
Figure and background merge as blurred edges and a cacophony of brushstrokes create a moving moment rather than a still snapshot. Couple these choices with vibrant, complementary color, and you have myriad celebrations of life enlivening the staid, wooden-walled gallery that, ironically, once served as a courtroom.
Coker never thought she would be an artist. She earned a degree in psychology and another to be a counselor. Eventually — and armed with a talent for drawing and an excellent visual memory — she went into illustration in the newsroom at the Daily Press and also did courtroom drawings. Over the years, she photographed life creating a morgue of images from which she painted.
“My family was involved in biking, ballroom dancing, tai chi,” she said. “I had access to those things. I did art for the Virginia Symphony for four years.”
While she may start a painting — she works in acrylics — using a photograph as a reference, she may turn what once was an oysterman into a bicycle mechanic.
“These are all made up,” she says of her current work. “I do not have something I copied from a photograph here. They are invented.”
What matters to Coker is accuracy, how fingers are place on a keyboard, how a musician is holding an instrument.
While Coker can paint a realistic portrait, she is more interested in engaging the viewer in what a person is doing. Her figures may have minimal features to keep the focus on their actions.
As a result, she presents universal happenings to which a broad swathe of people can relate. She keeps them attracted, as moving things do.
“Motion and emotion,” she says. “If I can get someone to feel it inside, I have accomplished something.”
Replicating a pulsing sense of life is not easy unless, as in Coker’s case, the paint runs through your blood.”
You can see the entire article at: OUTER BANKS NOW
And don’t miss my 5th Annual Show and Sale tonight (Friday, November 8, 2019) beginning at 5:30pm at Associates in Dermatology. Hope to see you there!
