Qcc Artist Directory

Claire Cote

drawing, painting

Probing and interacting with “place” is central to my process.

Gallery

About the Art

Animate Plant Bones:
Collected Plant Skeletons
Fragile yet Forceful
Still but Energetic
Each unique, an individual –
Metaphoric
Growth map
Returning to Earth
Fragility
Animate
Mysterious
High Desert Driftwood
Inverted they become strange creatures with long legs – on stilts
Theatrical, asking for light, ready to become shadow-makers.

Claire’s current works on paper, “Botanical Shadows” combine delicate black ink pen lines and silhouette shadow forms with flowing watercolors in the palette of her high desert homeplace. The series celebrates fleeting interactions of light and shadow, intricate botanical forms and ephemeral silhouettes of flora grown, observed or gathered in Northern New Mexico.

Bio

I am a multi-passionate artist-mother and community collaborator.

For me, art is a form of field work. Experimentation, exploration, observation, drawing and listening are my “tools for the journey” to delve into mysteries, sufferings, joys, and our ever-expanding web of stories; personal to cultural, ecological to historical, mundane to metaphysical. Probing and interacting with “place” is central to my process.

I am currently making works on paper using pen and ink, water color and layering to explore shadows cast by plant stems in situ and a series of delicate, humorous, spindly botanical bones hung in a whimsical installation.

I also love to relax and “paint doodle” with watercolors, inks, or food coloring and sometimes a sprinkle of salt.