Paintings

The paintings of FIRSTLIGHT are spatially ambiguous subtle color fields of oil on canvas in which point of view, foreground and background, flip. Emergence and disappearance are controlled by applying transparent layers of sprayed paint. Each painting has one or more borders of opposing color intensity, creating the illusion of movement. There is mystery and evanescence around this confused sense of relative position: a challenge to any objective understanding. The subtle changes in coloration, the spatial expansiveness, disarms viewers until they are caught by their own experience of change of focus.

“Unlike the somber-toned color field paintings of Mark Rothko or the fanciful stains of Helen Frankenthaler, Coit’s colors carry a delicate tension between stasis and movement that renders the works enthralling and magnetic. While their incredible depth on the canvas suspends them in space, their chromatic metamorphosis keeps the eye moving…Frozen yet in flux…the Firstlight paintings [capture] color in a relative and mutable state. It is this paradoxical quality that Coit has not only mastered but conquered.” - Jennie Hirsh, from “Before and After Language: The Art of Madelin Coit”