Nicholas Coley 

Nicholas Coley was born in Connecticut in 1971 and raised in Muir Beach, California. He moved to Europe

and studied art at the Beaux-Arts, and lived, studied, and meditated daily for a year in a Buddhist

Monastery outside of Bordeaux. Coley says, “My painting has its roots in the fanatical ethos of a small

school in the South of France which made Cezanne its figurehead and had a very black and white view of

art history. L'Ecole Marchutz was a great place to get rooted in a concrete perspective of the fundamentals

and a format of painting from real life.

For 20 years he has been painting full time, almost everyday, and is currently living in the San Fransisco

Bay area of California; “Twenty years later, I still paint on location, finding myself in relation to a place and

seeking unity with my surroundings. More recently the matter of composition has played a prevalent role in

my work, as I experiment with less conventional dynamics to arrange the urban and natural environments. I

see no end to the possibilities of painting out in the world.”