Meaghan Coles is a newly established artist and a recent Honours graduate from Uni SA’s South Australian School of Art 2010 with a Bachelor of Visual Arts. Coles’ is a contemporary painter whose works are as inspiring and genuine as the artist herself. Her emotive artworks are abstracted figurative representations portraying photographs of models that explores how the female face is objectified within popular advertising. Coles’ uses the traditional medium of oil paint, but then combines it with various mixed media techniques such as spray enamel, acrylic, ink, pen, charcoal and resin allowing accidental mark making to generate an impression of greater depth in order to symbolically restore some expression and personality to the picture-perfect, sexualized faces that seem to be devoid of any individuality and create a new, fresh uniqueness to these previously superficial portrayals. (Image to the right: 'Elegance' 90cmX60cm, Oil On Board).
The images have been painted on various surfaces such as ply wood, canvas and board combined with a collage of newspapers which are transferred onto the paintings using a gel medium and are generally displayed in the background of the composition creating multiple layers and textures. Interestingly, Coles’ does not prime the surface of the wood in anyway, but retains its natural state in order to allow the grain and imperfections of the wood to emerge forth from the alleged beauty of the painted models. The reasoning behind this technique is to permit the subtlety of her symbolism to be observed in plain sight, being the imperfections that all individuals posses, including these seemingly perfect women publicized in adverting that are supposed to portray flawless beauty.
Coles painting detail the beauty and imperfections of the subject simultaneously with her successful use of positive and negative space in her compositions and the way that she manipulates the imagery effectively captivates the main focal points of the models being the impeccable cheekbones, bold eyes and pouting lips. The abstracted, washed over approach is regularly and competently used in her works, it has the ability to draw the attention of the viewers gaze to the key elements of the imagery and captivate them with the beauty of its subtle skin tones, bold lines and its rough aesthetic finish.
Aside from being a clearly talented up and coming artist, Coles’ beautiful imagery which is clearly laden with underlying metaphors of ignorant beauty, raises concerning topic within our social culture being the objectified portrayal of women in advertisement. This notion is well translated in one particular painting, titled '10 Rules of Beauty', upon which she uses newspaper collage in the background presenting an article describing the ten rules of beauty. The theory is portrayed candidly but effectively, being that what they are selling will make you beautiful and infer that you must have it. However, Coles artworks are just as bold in there execution by demonstrating how obvious it is that the media is trying to force their perception of beauty on society and in turn encourages us to look beyond the portrayal of unattainable beauty and question the true reflection of what constitutes as magnificence.
Coles’ is not only an inspiring visual artist who has well revealed and executed an obvious skill as a painter and conceptual artist, she is also the winner of the 2011 SALA Festival, Adelaide Central School of Art Professional Development award! Coles’ also spent 6 months in upstate New York on an exchange scholarship which she has indicated had a huge impact on her practice today, being more experimental. Even though the subject matter is similar you can notice a shift to a looser style.
Meaghan Coles with her image, What's hot, what's not, and what's always a classic, 240 x 120cm, Oil on board
'What's now', 90x60cm, Oil, pen, spray enamel & resin on board
