Joanna Coke: an artist studying form and nature
An artist who counts Boston and Miami among her hometowns, Joanna Coke has added another haunt to her list of special places – Nokomis.
Tucked into a sturdy little house three minutes from the Venice Jetties, Coke and her partner, sculptor David Storlie, have created a quiet haven and studio surrounded by an old Florida garden.
"Living in old Florida surroundings gives me wonderful opportunities to paint plein air," she said.
Of a recent painting of the tiny wooden chapel at Historic Spanish Point, Coke said, "I painted this image in morning light with a palette knife on canvas. I wanted to capture the feeling of nature engulfing the church to make the building feel delicate amid the heavy trees."
Joanna Coke in her garden, standing next to a sculpture by her husband David Storlie. A huge banner of the Roman Forum (left over from a charity event) creates privacy and drama, and the property trades-in the traditional lawn for a assortment of plantings of drought-tolerant native plants, ornamentals, and succulents.
After three years in Baton Rouge where Coke got her MFA, painting in Florida again has awakened three things that fascinate her as subjects, Coke said: landscapes, shelters and nudes.
With a strong background in figurative and landscape painting, she was trained by nationally known artists, Michael Del Priore in portraiture and Leonard Wren in landscape painting.
She also studied art abroad in Paris in 2000 and in Venice, Rome and Florence in 2004. After they moved to Nokomis in 2005, she has been working to establish herself here.
This past year, however, has brought her both international recognition and new artistic opportunities.
"Used But Not Forgotten"
After winning Nat’l. Juried XTO Nude Image Awards in Hollywood, Calif, and Fourth Annual National Juried Show at the Katharine Butler Gallery in Sarasota, Coke will travel to Russia and Norway this fall to participate in cultural exchange programs.
In September, she will travel to the city of Velikiy Novgorad as part of 15-year-old charitable medical and cultural exchange program to conduct art workshops with Russian artists and mount an exhibition at a university in Moscow. After that, she’s off to Oslo to meet with a number of galleries who have expressed interest in her work.
Her newest work expresses her ongoing interest in what she calls "layering," which refers both to an investigation of new techniques, and to a desire to capture a moment in the life of a place or a form that expresses both the psychological or emotional content of that moment.
In one of her new paintings, evocatively called "Used But Not Forgotten," an old tractor seat in the foreground is rusty and forlorn, and behind it is a ramshackle farmhouse we fear is also empty.
Her latest nudes – she calls them Veiled Images – show a thin lacework overlay on a series of seated nudes that suggest a discomfort with the unclothed body shared perhaps by both the subject and its viewers.
Coke has shown in one-person shows, and invitationals all over the country, most recently at Dancing Crane Gallery, Bradenton, and Harmony Gallery at Friedman Symphony Center,
Like many full-time artists, Coke began her career in a related field – first as a graphic designer in the Boston area, and then for seven years as a fashion designer, working mostly with Victoria’s Secret.
Those two jobs, she said, gave her a feeling for the totality of a project – from planning and creation to delivery, cost and production. They have served her well, Coke says, as she made the transition to working full time in fine art.
She has also been an instructor in Color Theory, Composition, Drawing, Acrylics, Pastels and Oils at the Manatee Art Center in Bradenton since 2006.
Coke may be contacted via her web site www.joannacoke.com.