Claire B. Cotts

Artist Statement

My paintings are personal narratives, fragments of stories exploring ideas about faith, relationship, vulnerability and hope. In the abstract paintings, there is a pull and tug between forces: disorder and entropy countered by balance and structure the tangle and chaos of vines intermixed with off-kilter, tenuously balanced blocks and small hopeful symbols of structure: a seed pod, a bud, a branch.  I hope they convey the feeling of constrained joy I have when I make them - the nervous breath-held happiness a child has while stacking up books and blocks and toys into a precariously swaying tower.

Bio

Claire B. Cotts has been exhibiting her distinctive, richly layered figurative and abstract canvases for over twenty-five years.  Her work has been exhibited nationally, and is represented in numerous private and corporate collections. Ms. Cotts lives and works in Berkeley, California.

Education

MFA University of California, Berkeley 1992

BA Oberlin College 1986.  Major - Fine Art, Minor - History

SACI Florence, Italy Spring 1985

Selected Exhibitions

2011 Lost in the Night Garden, Tinney Contemporary, Nashville, Tennessee

2011 The Fifth Annual Invitational Art Exhibition, Graton Gallery, Sonoma, California

2010 Figuring Out the Figure, SRJC Gallery, Santa Rosa, California

2009 MOCHA (Museum of Children's Art), Oakland, California

2009 Dreams and Revelations, Marin MOCA, Novato, California

2008 Gallery Nucleus, Alhambra, California

2008 SFMOMA Artist's Gallery, San Francisco, California

2007 Artscape Gallery, Walnut Creek, California

2007 Allegory, Art Works Downtown, San Rafael, California

2005 Tew Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia

2005 Arches Gallery, Healdsburg, California

2005 Barbara Anderson Gallery, Berkeley, California

2004 MOCHA (Museum of Children's Art), Oakland, California

2004 Ann Frank - Teaching Tolerance, Novato, California

2001 Davidson Galleries Seattle, Washington

1998 Print Making Fellowship Exhibit, KALA, Berkeley, California

1997 California Museum of Art, Santa Rosa, California

1994-1996 Susan Cummins Gallery  Mill Valley, California

1993 San Francisco Jewish Museum, San Francisco, California

1992 M.F.A. Exhibition, University Art Museum, Berkeley, California

Honors & Awards           

2000 Full Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont

1997-1998 KALA Printmaking Fellowship, Berkeley, California

1994-1995 Fulbright Fellowship, Painting in Turkey

Selected Collections

Nordstroms, Pinnacle Bank, Casper Design Group, Howry Design Associates, Bella Luz Studio, Holland Design, Drexler and Associates, Mark Ulriksen, Jim Melchert, Alex Gross

Illustrated Children's Books

The Remembering Stone  Barbara Russell author. Farrar, Straus, Giroux. New York 2003

The Christmas Gift  Francisco Jiminez, author. Houghton-Mifflin Boston. 2001  Bilingual, English and Spanish

Manuela's Gift  Kristen Estes, author.  Chronicle Books, San Francisco 1999  Published in English, Chinese and Korean versions

Kidnapped in the Amazon Jungle  F. Bruce Lamb, Manuel Cordova-Rios, authors.  North Atlantic Press, Berkeley, California. 1993