Julia Coash

Julia Coash is an artist and educator whose interests in global studies, anthropology, and visual culture are important influences on her creative work. Her paintings and sculptures have been exhibited in Cairo, Paris, Bermuda and the United States. She taught and was Co-chair of the Art Department and Director of the Masters in Liberal Studies Program at Albertus Magnus College. She has also held teaching positions at Bermuda College and the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Coash received her MFA in Painting from James Madison University; her MSEd in Higher Education and BA in Ethnographic Photography (President’s Scholar Degree Program) from Southern Illinois University. She has received numerous grants to study and practice art abroad including among others: Visiting Artist Residency with the Masterworks Museum in Bermuda; EBUKI Conference in the Solway Plain, England; and for research in Japan, and Southeast Asia. Her works are help in many public and private collections such as the Shapin-Nicholas Art Project, Masterworks Museum, Bermuda, the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette, IN and Southern Illinois University. Recent exhibitions have included the Painting Center, NYC, 21C Museum Hotel – Louisville, Moremen Gallery, Louisville, KY and at the Shapin-Nicholas Art Project.

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My mixed media “Water Ways” paintings combine recycled maps, nautical charts, and water-based media, juxtaposing wet against dry as a means of exploring the tensions between material and soluble forms on earth. These works have been influenced by water currents, rising sea levels and atmospheric rivers. Strong gestural marks suggest rivers and currents while circular forms allude to both micro and macroscopic phenomena.

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Themes of interconnection are explored through the play between positive and negative shapes and visual movement. Interwoven marks both emerge and are submerged, suggesting both meander maps and the ebb and flow of water levels. This dynamic expresses the delicate balance between land and sea on our fragile planet.