Jessie Coles
Color in Conversation
Jessie Coles & Jackie Watson
11 July – 24 August 2025
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Summer Light
15 July – 21 August 2016
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Twenty!
LYDM Turns 20 in 2015
9 January – 1 February 2015
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New Views in Still Life and Landscape
Jessie Coles and Susan Mcalister
16 May – 15 June 2014
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Education
B.A., Studio Art 1986, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
Corcoran School of Art, Washington, D.C., Drawing 1987-88
Piedmont Virginia Community College, Advanced Painting 2001/2002, Advanced Drawing 1994/1996
Solo and Two Person Exhibitions
2016 Martha Jefferson Hospital, Charlottesville, VA
2014 New Views: Coles and Mcalister, Les Yeux du Monde, Charlottesville, VA
2011 National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD
2010 Chroma Projects, Tableaux Vivants, Charlottesville, VA
2009 McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2007 McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2005 C&O Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
2004 Cancer Center Gallery, UVA Hospital, Charlottesville, VA
2003 New Dominion Book Shop, Charlottesville, VA
Selected Exhibitions
2017 9th Annual Juried Competition, Juror: Stuart Shils, Prince St. Gallery, NY, NY
2017 Pandion Gallery, Fishers Island, VA
20 17 #fab4painters, Art on the Trax, , Crozet , VA
2016 Summer Light, Les Yeux du Monde, Charlottesville, VA
2016 Pandion Gallery, Fishers Island, NY
2015 Carpe Diem, Charlottesville, VA
2014 Cabell Gallery, Nimrod Faculty Show, Lexington VA
2014 LYDM Turns Twenty, Les Yeux du Monde, Charlottesville, VA
2014 Faculty Show, Beverly Street Studio School, Staunton, VA
2013 Painting: Karen Blair, Priscilla Whitlock, Jessie Coles, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2013 Academy of Fine Art, National Juried Show, Lynchburg, VA
2012 Martha Jefferson Hospital, Charlottesville, VA
2012 Design House 2012, Charlottesville, VA
2012 Muses Art for Living, Charlottesville, VA
2011 Pandion Gallery, Fishers Island, CT
2011 Gallery Piquel, New Hope, PA
2007 Chica’s Choice, an invitational show of 3 painters curated by Chica Tenney, PVCC, Charlottesville, VA
2008 VMRC, Juried Show, Harrisonburg, VA (Jurors: William Bennet, Gerry Coulter and James Crable)
2007 Nelson Fine Arts Gallery, Juried Show, Lexington, VA Merit Award
2006 VMRC, Juried Show, Harrisonburg, VA. Honorable Mention (Jurors: Rebecca Humphrey and Robert Stuart)
2004 C2D, Juried Show, McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA Best in Show (Juror: Dean Dass)
2002 Ted Turner Alumni Show, Fayerweather Gallery, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
2002 Paintings of the Piedmont, Juried Show, Charlottesville, VA
2002 Best of PVCC, Dickerson Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
2001 Café Bacce, Scottsville, VA
Awards and Collections
Bethesda Painting Award Semi-Finalist, 2011 (Jurors: Philip Geiger, Evelyn Hankins and Jinchul Kim)
Bethesda Painting Award Semi-Finalist, 2010 (Jurors: Dr. Carolyn K. Carr, Mark Karnes and Erling Sjovold).
Vivian L. Aunspaugh Scholarship, 1985.
Martha Jefferson Hospital, Charlottesville, VA
Piedmont Virginia Community College, Charlottesville, VA
University of Virginia Hospital, Charlottesville, VA
Free Union Country School, Free Union, VA
Publications
2014 Sketchbook, “Warm Welcome to New Instructor – Jessie Coles.”
2013 C-Ville, May 21, Sargent, S. “Warm Welcome.”
2011 Martha Jefferson Magazine, State of the Art(work), Painting
2001 PVCC Arts Brochure, Painting
1996 IRIS, Literary Magazine for UVA, Charcoal Drawings
Membership
2010 Piedmont Council for the Arts
2009 Became a renting member of McGuffey Art Center
2005 Accepted as a member of the McGuffey Art Center
Teaching
2015 Crozet Arts, Crozet, VA
2013 – Present Beverly Street Studio School, Staunton, VA
2010 McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2019 Village School, Charlottesville, VA
Artist Statement
Energy and movement are the real subject of my still life paintings. In setting up a still life, I look for an initial gestural path connecting the objects in the painting. Over repeated painting sessions, new and unexpected paths emerge. The constant rethinking of what connections to emphasize and which to let recede puts a tension into play. Things grow, shrink and get shifted right and left and the residue of these changes add unexpected rhythms to the paintings. Similarly, over time the interaction of color appears to change in timbre. As these changes are documented, unexpected colors knock against each other creating an energy and excitement I never could have predicted.
The resulting paintings are more expressive than accurate, less about a moment glimpsed than about a duration of time and a multiplicity of observations.