Jessie Coles & Jackie Watson: Color in Conversation

Les Yeux du Monde is pleased to announce Color in Conversation, a two-person exhibition featuring new work by Jessie Coles and Jackie Watson, opening Friday, July 11, from 5-7PM and continuing through August 24. In this exhibition, color is not merely a formal device, but an active participant—each hue, tone, and texture engaged in dialogue across the gallery space, within and between the artists’ respective works.

At the heart of Color in Conversation is the shared belief that color is a living, relational force. For both Coles and Watson, color is language—fluid, intuitive, and shaped by the interplay of structure and spontaneity. Their practices, while materially distinct, are united by an abiding interest in color relationships, perceptual depth, and formal experimentation.

In Jessie Coles’s most recent body of work, color takes center stage through an unexpected medium: reclaimed fabric. After developing acute sensitivities to traditional painting materials, Coles turned to textiles, assembling intricate compositions from a fixed set of geometric shapes cut from wood and clad in richly pigmented fabric scraps. The resulting constructions are painterly in sensibility, with the textural presence of collage. As with the teaching of Josef Albers—whose assertion that “color is relative” remains foundational to Coles’s practice—each hue is understood not in isolation but in context, shifting and vibrating according to its neighbors. Wool, raw silk, and leather interact in ways akin to oil glazes or impasto, each fabric reflecting or absorbing light differently, lending each work a dynamic surface that invites extended looking.

Jackie Watson’s paintings are similarly attuned to the expressive potential of color, though her approach is gestural and layered, born from a meditative studio practice steeped in music, memory, and improvisation. Working in oil on canvas, Watson allows each composition to unfold organically and without fixed outcome. “The process is not about imposing a vision,” writes the artist, “but about staying present enough to recognize when it arrives.” Watson’s paintings evolve in layers, with visible traces of earlier forms and color fields glimmering beneath the surface. These “understories,” as she calls them, are integral to the final image, offering a felt sense of time and transformation. Her use of color is emotive and atmospheric, emerging from a place of intuition and internal rhythm. In Watson’s words, “Each painting evolves into a conversation—between color and memory, gesture and stillness, control and surrender.”

Together, Coles and Watson propose color not as a static attribute but as a site of exploration—where material, perception, and meaning intersect.

Jessie Coles received her BA in Studio Art from the University of Virginia and continued her study of painting and drawing at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C.. Her work can be found in numerous public and private collections, including that of the Inova Schar Cancer Institute, University of Virginia Hospital, Martha Jefferson Hospital and Boar’s Head Resort. Jackie Watson received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and her MFA from Hunter College in New York. Watson’s works also grace significant public and private collections, including that of the Contemplative Science Center at the University of Virginia, the Costar Group, International Petroleum Corporation in Dubai and Grupo Albion in Madrid.