The tradition of botanical illustrations are as much an accurate document as an exploration of the alien forms of these often beguiling and unknowable species. For Coates this tradition evokes...
The tradition of botanical illustrations are as much an accurate document as an exploration of the alien forms of these often beguiling and unknowable species. For Coates this tradition evokes a merging of observation and fantasy. Its reference in his painting is an attempt to materialise a deeply felt contradiction.
In this modelled but flat, colourless landscape he has forced a co-existence of beings and forms into an imagined ‘Romantic’ world. A place where species grow from the ground, part animal and part plant, growing as one, in a staged fantasy of shared being-ness. Coates sees the image as a common origin narrative, one rooted in a relatable story and not in unobservable scientific fact. One that can be seen to exist at its evolving stage, but recognisable to our ‘modern’ sense of self, one that appeals to the craving for connectivity with nature in ‘modern’ life. The imagery exists for him as a personal creation myth, but with the inevitable contradictions and fallacies that come with such a reductive and didactic narrative.