Frances Coates is a retired art educator, who often spends time each day working on her paintings. Her sketchbook has dozens of ideas for future painting compositions waiting to come to life on canvas. The ideas include exploring the lifecycle of wildflowers from the spiral opening of a spring trillium to dehiscing seedpods, to insect-wildflower interdependence to views of treasured, threatened wildflowers. Many of her current paintings show the lifecycles of butterflies in their environment with their host plant or tree.
Frances has found inspiration for her paintings of wildflowers from taking nature walks and from studying the artwork of Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) and Mary Delany (1700-1788). Merian studied the lifecycle of insects (focused on butterflies) and their host plants in Europe and Suriname. Delany produced hundreds of intricate paper mosaics of hundreds of flowers both native and cultivated in Great Britain.
Some of Frances' paintings are exhibited in the galleries at Cottage Curator in Sperryville, Virginia.
Her email address is fcwldflw@gmail.com
