CV (PDF)

The work of American artist Coral Woodbury is concerned with making visible the unseen, which encompasses reshaping absences, illuminating the workings of personal and collective memory, and unsettling dominant historical narratives. Recurring motifs such as books and archives, art history and material culture, anchor her practice around the re-presentation of women. Her research is realized in paintings, drawings, and in her signature Revised Edition series. With it, Woodbury creates a material intervention in the inherited Western canon. Her chosen ground is Janson’s History of Art — which entirely omitted artist women from its first 29 printings. Inking over pages torn from the volume upends the myth of the lone male genius with a gathered chorus of artists, whose gaze is leveled directly outward. When complete, Revised Edition will total 617 paintings, and testify against the erasure of women and the global majority, and the hierarchies imposed on the work of their hands. These renderings on paper ephemera are augmented by oil paintings which sample and remix European “master” works, translations which create space for women in art.

From rural New York (b.1971) Woodbury studied at Binghamton University (BFA) and made her way to Florence to study painting. Thirty years on, the artist-teachers she met there, collectively called rosenclaire, and a cohort of 90 other international artists, continue to work together. An MA and museum career informed her search for the buried stories of women across time and place. Art has been her path to engage in communities and lands from Kathmandu to Cuba, Italy to Ireland, where her work responds to the site and its historical resonances. Recent honors include Cill Rialaig residency (Ireland); International Mother Art Prize, Finalist (UK); and exhibition at Newport Art Museum (RI). She exhibits internationally, and her work is held in public and private collections, including Katrin Bellinger Collection and The Women’s Art Collection, University of Cambridge.

Woodbury is represented by Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston and Los Angeles, and HackelBury Fine Art, London.