About Me

Hi, I am so glad you are here. I am Courtney, but my friends call me Coco. My passion for painting was born out of a lifelong love of color and interest to interpret the beauty of life on canvas. I grew up in Southern California. Long summers spent in the Laguna Beach ocean from sun up to sun down, my grandmother's garden spilling color into every corner of my memory, and my mother's bountiful flower arrangements from the Los Angeles flower market filling our home. My father collects abstract art and gave me an early appreciation for the way an art piece could hold an entire emotional world without explaining itself. I started painting in high school, where I began to see the world differently. Unexpected color in everything, energy in the ordinary, beauty in places I hadn't thought to notice before. I then went on to study Art History and fine art at SMU.

After SMU, I put my paint brushes away and dusted them off occasionally to paint gifts for friends or to fill my walls. It was during Covid, newly home with third child, a daughter, that my practice became something serious and consuming. The Connecticut landscape outside our window, the particular quality of its light, its stillness, its seasonal drama, gave me endless material and a new urgency. Something about that season of life, equal parts overwhelming and quietly beautiful, made me need to paint and want to share it with the world.

My process draws from life, memory, and photographs. From the streets and energy of New York City where I now live with my husband Andrew and our three children, Redding, Ozzie, and Pippa, to our travels, to the natural world I have been absorbing since childhood. I continue to sharpen my practice through classes at the New York Academy of Art and the Art Students League, and I am deeply inspired by the fearless vision of Hilma af Klint and Georgia O'Keeffe. Two artists who understood that nature is never just decoration.

When I took my first painting class back in high school, something shifted. I began to see the world through the act of painting it. Unexpected color in a shadow, energy in a branch, light doing something extraordinary on an ordinary afternoon. I have never stopped seeing the world that way, and this work is my attempt to share that vision with you.

Deeply observing, surrounding oneself with beautiful things. I believe it is the ultimate antidote. I create to express what lives in my heart but resists words. Some paint on a canvas, and suddenly something passes between us. That exchange is why I paint.