Charmagne Coe: Mixed-media artist captivates with her enchanting surrealist artwork

Charmagne Coe 

Mixed-media artist captivates with her enchanting surrealist artwork.

By Nicole Royse

Phoenix-based artist Charmagne Coe creates alluring surrealist mixed media paintings that feature a dazzling combination of watercolor, ink, and pastel that dance across the canvas. Her work conjures both the inner and outer-worldly, and possesses a free and delicate style. Coe’s creations transport viewers to another world.

Evident throughout her extensive body of work, which includes both painting and drawings, is her brilliant use of color, free flowing lines, and simplicity of forms. The artist classifies her work as “expressive surrealism” and centers on elements of science, mythology, and spirituality.” Coe practices automatism, used by surrealists as an organic and impromptu way to create artwork, allowing the subconscious to come through in the work.

Inspiration for Coe’s work stems from her interest in connectedness, with each work a complex tapestry of several culled ideas that spontaneously occur in process and then become a story, as well as relational aspects of life at large. One of her recent paintings, titled The Ever Arrivals, depicts a couple locked in an embrace surrounded by an ocean of colors and shapes, contrasted by a chaotic, intangible environment made of interconnected lines that appear to refer to life and relationships.

Coe received her bachelors of art degree in elementary education with a minor in fine arts from Northern Arizona University. She’s exhibited her artwork both locally and nationally, accumulating an impressive resume that includes such distinguished venues as the Arizona Opera, ASU Institute for Humanities Research, Coconino Center for the Arts, Herberger Theater Art Gallery, MonOrchid Gallery, {9} The Gallery, The Artery, and the West of the Moon Gallery.

Coe’s work has also been featured in numerous publications both print and online including Utne Reader, Luxe Interiors + Design, Creative Quarterly, Juxtapoz Magazine, and YabYum Music & Art. She’s also created stunning album covers for musician Matt Bingham, as well as Gatefold vinyl sleeves cover art and poetry for musician Pausal titled “Along the Mantic Spring.” Explore Coe’s artwork firsthand throughout 2017 at Artery Gallery, located in downtown Phoenix. For more about artist Charmagne Coe, visit charmagnecoe.com.

Phoenix Art Museum Highlights Local Sculptor Patricia Sannit

The Phoenix Art Museum presents Patricia Sannit’s Rise Fall Rise through September. Patricia Sannit was awarded the 2016 Arlene and Morton Scult Contemporary Forum Artist Award, which recognizes a mid-career Arizona artist whose work demonstrates a sustained degree of excellence and commitment. According to the Phoenix Art Museum, “Sannit works mainly with clay, a material deeply connected to human history; the work connects with her archeological experiences, her research into the migration of people, ideas, and culture; trying to understand what it means to be human resonates through her work.”

Rise Fall Rise is Sannit’s response to unfolding political and cultural events. It features striking bulbous head forms containing oblique references to specific events inscribed only through mark making and dating. This exhibition plays with notions of the anti-monument and is a chance to exemplify a collective vulnerability in challenging times, according to Sannit.

Also on display at the Phoenix Art Museum is the work of the 2016 Contemporary Forum Artist Grants winners: David Emitt Adams, Christine Cassano, Bryan David Griffith, Constance McBride, and Mary Meyer. Rise Fall Rise will be on view at the Phoenix Art Museum through Sept. 17 in the Anderman and Marley Galleries.

Phoenix Art Museum

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