ArtZone 461 Gallery is happy to announce gallery artist Nicholas Coley’s pending parenthood and appropriately named solo show, “Baby Needs New Shoes.”  The phrase came up while discussing an earlier scheduling for Coley’s show in the Gallery artists show rotation.  We are pleased to accommodate Coley and his collectors with this exhibit of new oil paintings.

Nicholas Coley is a San Francisco plein air painter who tends to use less conventional dynamics in arranging urban and natural environments.  More of the canvas is sparse and uncluttered, forcing detail and subject to the edges.  He looks for compositions that emphasize the immediacy, rush and rigors of contemporary, urban plein air painting.

The current series offers hints of new vitality and anticipation, while clearly indicating a growth and maturity in the artist’s style.  He is more confident in allowing color theory to play a smaller role to his larger love of color that makes more of a statement with strong gestural lines and bold brushwork.

Coley studied art at L'ecole des Beaux Arts in Aix-en-Provence and at the Marchutz school in Le Tholonet, France.  He lived, studied and painted for a year in a Vietnamese Buddhist Monastery in southwestern France.  He earned his BA in Painting from Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA and has been painting in the Bay Area since 2000.