Claire B. Cotts
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.
"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." - Claire B. Cotts
Honors & Awards
Fulbright Fellowship - Painting in Turkey. 1994 - 1995
KALA Printmaking Fellowship - Berkeley, California. 1997 - 1998
Vermont Studio Center - Full Fellowship. Johnson, Vermont. 2000
Education
MFA University of California, Berkeley 1992
BA Oberlin College 1986. Major - Fine Art, Minor - History
SACI Florence, Italy Spring 1985
Exhibitions
Marin MOCA "dreams and revelations" Novato, California 2009
Gallery Nucleus Alhambra, California 2008
SFMOMA Artist's Gallery San Francisco, California 2008
Artscape Gallery Walnut Creek, California 2007
Art Works Downtown, "Allegory", San Rafael, California 2007
Artscape Gallery Walnut Creek, California 2007
Artscape Gallery Walnut Creek, California 2006
Tew Gallery Atlanta, Georgia 2005
Arches Gallery Healdsburg, California 2005
Barbara Anderson Gallery, Berkeley, California 2005
MOCHA (Museum of Children's Art), Oakland, California 2004
Ann Frank - Teaching Tolerance. Novato, California 2004
SFMOMA Artist's Gallery San Francisco, California 2004
MOCHA (Museum of Children's Art), Oakland, California 2003
Davidson Galleries Seattle, Washington 2001
SFMOMA Artist's Gallery San Francisco, California 1999
KALA Berkeley, California. Printing-Making Fellowship Exhibit 1998
Susan Cummins Gallery Mill Valley, California 1997
PROARTS Gallery Oakland, California 1997
California Museum of Art, Santa Rosa, California 1997
PROARTS - Gallery Curator's Commendation. Oakland, California 1996
Cecille Moochnek Gallery Berkeley, California 1996
Susan Cummins Gallery Mill Valley, California 1996
Susan Cummins Gallery Mill Valley, California 1994
Susan Cummins Gallery, Mill Valley, California 1995
San Francisco Jewish Museum San Francisco, California 1993
University Art Museum, MFA Exhibition. Berkeley, California. 1992
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