James Coe - New England Landscapes & Bird Painter, New York

James Coe is a wonderful painter in the state of New York. He has a passion for the landscapes of his home state and also an abiding passion for birds. His work is just gorgeous. I look at it online and I think I want to live there. In his work I often see the old wilderness that I used to read about when I was young, enthralled by stories of the native peoples in that part of the world . And I see the mountains he has floating in the background, mysterious, and I remember experiencing that they are regarded as gods in some parts of the human world. That quality of mystery and awe in the landscape comes through in James’ paintings. And he uses only the finest materials, oils, linen, Upper Canada Stretchers… I urge anybody in need of some peace and sublimity to go to his website and check out his work. Better still go to the studio and buy some of his stuff. Nothing could be better to come home to….

Here are Jim’s own words…
medium_COE CatskillGlow 22x36 “This is one of my favorite paintings that I have finished recently. It is based on a field study that I painted late last winter, while standing in an open field just a couple of miles from home. In warmer months, the field is filled with bobolinks and meadowlarks, wildflowers and butterflies, but in the winter it’s all about the view. For those of us living in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York, this iconic profile of the northern range of the Catskill Mountains is so familiar we might not realize how unusual and exceptionally beautiful it is. As I saw them on this day — bathed in the early evening light, and with the highest peaks glowing pink and orange — the Catskills, ‘our’ mountains, appeared almost magical to me.”