Tacoma artist Kerry Cole is a self-professed “seer.”
“I talk to ghosts and furniture,” says her artist’s statement. “I think bugs have feelings and I paint what I feel coming from others, whether they be actual people, people I see in my dreams or sense around me coming through other dimensions.” The concept is reminiscent of certain statements by English artist and poet William Blake, who claimed to see spirits and was able to make detailed portraits of them.
Over a dozen of Cole’s richly colored paintings are currently on display at the Tacoma Public Library’s Handforth Gallery. Cole’s paintings are mostly of female faces set off by flowery, flowing hair and feathery fashion accessories. Lush red lips lure the viewer in. Cole has a gift for painting expressive, soulful eyes that gaze out from the flat surface of the painting.
In works like “Weight of the World,” all of Cole’s hallmarks are present. The figure depicted has pale skin and vivid lips. Rusty tears run down from wide-spaced eyes. A fiery nimbus surrounds the figure. A tiny house and a group of tiny mountain climbers are on the shoulders of the woman. Cole’s style is akin to a kind of doodling that a teenager might do on sheets of paper while lost in daydreams. Cole, however, has taken it to the next level with jewel-bright color and accents of gold leaf or collage elements.
A personal favorite is “Oh Deer!” This small painting is one of Cole’s stylized heads equipped with a pair of orange antlers and set upon a pasty white deer’s body. “Sidewalk Confession,” a portrait of a pink poodle, has the allure of black velvet paintings of dogs and children with big, sorrowful eyes that were popular in the 1950s and 60s.
Set alongside Cole’s work is a show of enhanced Polaroid snapshots by Tom Holt. Taken in Europe, Florida and locally, these intimate, gem-like works are a great complement to Cole’s lavish paintings.
The show runs through July 30. Get out and see it while you can. For further information visit http://www.tacomapubliclibrary.org or http://www.kerrycolefineart.com.