Ann E. Coulter

The exhibition, Thickets: Ann E. Coulter, on view in McLean County Arts Center’s Armstrong Gallery from January 15 through February 20, 2010. Opening reception on Friday, January 15, from 5pm to 7pm. The reception is free and open to the public.

Thickets features Coulter’s marvelous work in pastel. Four of her new drawings measure 6 x 8 feet and form the core of this exhibition. Coulter can be broadly described as a landscape artist. Her images are derived from photographs that Coulter takes “of weedy little patches of nothing and nowhere” in central Illinois. The resultant drawings are complicated, layered and detailed and contain a full range of natural forms, color, light and atmosphere.

With these large pastels, Coulter brings us startlingly close to the subject, inviting us to ponder just what it is that we are looking at. We understand that we are looking at “nature.” Yet, because we are seemingly enveloped by thorny twigs and shimmering grasses, coiling stalks and sticky pods in spaces that are dense and sometimes murky, it can be difficult to recognize where we are and to identify what we are seeing. The physical effort to “see” these drawings echoes the artist’s conceptual intent. Coulter states that her recent drawings “are very much about the difficulties we have defining the role of nature in today's culture.” Coulter’s work causes us to re-evaluate what we consider to be beautiful and valuable and what we consider to be dismissable. In an essay accompanying this exhibition, Bill Conger writes that Ann Coulter’s work “peers into the timeless moments and ever-moving cycles of nature and grasps for the rooted bits of truth.”

Ann E. Coulter was born in Joliet, Illinois. She received a BS from Illinois State University in 1980, a MA from San Diego State University in 1983, and a MFA from Bradley University in 2007. Coulter has shown consistently in solo and group shows in Illinois since 1988, and her work has recently been included in national and international exhibitions. She is represented by the Peoria Art Guild and Argazzi Art in Lakeville, Connecticut. Coulter lives and works in Elmwood, IL and Peoria, IL.

Thickets: Ann E. Coulter is sponsored by Julie Beich & Ian Crawley, Deanna Frautschi & Alan Bedell and Judy & Greg Struve.