Jacqueline Coates is an artist, art tutor and artist mentor based in the Barossa Valley, South Australia
Jacqueline has students online in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, and UK and in person via painting workshops.
Jacqueline has been a full time artist since 2001 and has been painting full time since leaving her full time job in advertising in early 2001 as a successful award winning art director of international repute to pursue her art, a much more risky path.
Jacqueline is known for her generosity as an art teacher and for communicating clearly what needs to be done, which is appreciated by her students.
In the lead up to this time of departure, Jacqueline finished a degree in painting and drawing at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales whilst working freelance in advertising on her one and a half days off a week to support her studies.
Despite trends at the time at art school, Jacqueline pursued her love of floral painting with an obsession of roses and peonies painting oversized blooms in her spare time.
A love of Paris and France led her to self-fund a visit to Paris to research the parks and gardens inside the peripherique, resulting in a body of work that reflected the relationship between the city as a living body and the inhabitants of the city experiencing this space with the parks as lungs to relax and breath, and the Seine as an artery and flow.
The artworks were made of layers of parchment, delicate hand drawn elements of maps, with cut paperwork to reveal layers of colour through the layers.
These pieces ultimately made it into the national collection via Artbank in Australia.
The fractured life between commercial and soulful art was thankfully interrupted with single motherhood forcing new lifestyle and support decisions. Jacqueline renovated a stone barn in rural South Australia which became a home for her young family and a painting studio and life as a full time artist.
Two national magazines ran lengthy pictorial editorials on aft life and floral paintings (Inside Out magazine and Australian Country Style) after which she was inundated with commissions and requests to teach in Australia and New Zealand leading to new skills as a blooms art teacher.
Throughout the time of the children growing up, Jacqueline created workshops and art tours to share the art inspiration of the culture of arts and gardens in France.
In 2016, Jacqueline founded French Art School in the beautiful region of the CREUSE in the Limousin, following in the footsteps of Claude Monet who painted the Confluence of the Creuse in 29 paintings.
In the tours, Jacqueline referenced the floral art in Paris museum collections, visited contemporary Parisian florists , visited the Creuse in Aubusson for the floral cartons and then offered art immersions to the south of France following Bonnard, the path of Matisse’s art and following in the trail of Monet’s excursion into Liguria.
Whilst sharing inspiration with others and helping others to fulfil their creative desires remains a passion, for which she has won many international awards, Jacqueline continues to be committed to her own art journey and producing her own art. An appreciation of artists who have come before who also loved to paint nature and florals in France are a continuing dialogue informing her work.