NICHOLAS COLEY
PAINTINGS
Soft Bend #23
oil on canvas
36” x 36”
Retail Value: $3,200
Minimum Bid: $1,125
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Nicholas Coley was born in Connecticut in 1971 and raised in Muir Beach, California. He hitchhiked around the states for a couple years after high school, trying to find Don Juan and Carlos Castenada. He was sure he had a destiny to become a medicine man or a brujo, but after getting hepatitis in a hostel in Santa Fe, he moved to Europe and studied art at the Beaux-Arts plus another small school for painting in the south of France. He lived, studied, and meditated daily for a year in a Buddhist Monastery outside of Bordeaux. But after reading “The Tropic of Capricorn,” by Henry Miller, he decided he was not meant for the disciplined, monastic life and went off in search for a more creative and spontaneous world. He found himself in Prague, where he sold paintings to tourists on the Charles Bridge for a year. From there he took the Trans-Siberian Railway through Russia and deep into China before having a complete spiritual collapse in the summer of ’94. The good news: it’s been a slow climb back up the mountain toward the benificenece and belonging of a higher power. Anchored by the love of a good woman he’s actually been able to support his family (including two extraordinary little kids and another on the way) and even make a downpayment on a house––all exclusively with the procedes from painting sales. He’s damn proud of this and is still, sort of, in dumb happy shock. For almost 20 years now he has been painting full time, almost everyday. Turns out, he was something of a medicine man after all.