Welcome
From the Artist
In the fall of 1986, I left my safe and secure job in the city to pursue a life-long dream: to live in the country and do work that was an authentic expression of my own, painting. I have had no formal training as an artist. I simply enjoy painting images that are pleasing to me and to the viewer and I hope that they that elicit life-affirming feelings and express warmth, joy, and innocent exuberance.
What kind of artist am I? About a year after I'd been painting and selling my art through a few galleries, an acquaintance, who formerly taught at a college of art, posed the question: "If a naïve artist becomes prolific and, over time, develops and masters the techniques they use, is he still a 'naïve' artist, and if not, what kind of artist is he or she?" Fifteen years later, I still don't know, but where the question seemed a little threatening then (artist's existential angst: where do I fit in in the art world or, worse, do I fit in at all?), as the years have passed, I now see the question as irrelevant to my art and of interest only for the relief of the anxiety that can accompany ambiguity. The label is just a label, and the art has value both in the satisfaction I experience from expressing a "vision" of my world and in whatever it invokes for each individual, hopefully a happy memory, a dream or vision, or a nostalgic sentiment.
I am aware that my painting techniques (how I physically apply paint on a canvas) advance; that both technique and subject matter evolve in response to the multi-faceted complexities of my environments. What hasn't changed is that I remain self-taught and that my paintings are expressions of my personal values: the importance of joy, of wonder, and of respect for each other; awe of the natural world; and the need to persevere in our optimism for ourselves and for the world we will leave behind.
Jerome Coulas
