About Gay P Cox

Behold!

Gay P. Cox | Art as Transvision

“When I was 16, I had what I have to call a ‘vision,’” explains Gay P. Cox, who was born and raised in England. “One evening, after watching a movie with our church youth group, I stepped outside and looked to the west and the setting sun. Suddenly, it was as if I could see more than what was evident in the bare facts of mathematics, astronomy, objects and colors. For a few moments I could see something vaster, usually invisible, and full of grace. I’ve been trying to paint that, to enable others to see that invisible reality, ever since.”

To encompass that reality has been the work of a lifetime. Cox is classically trained in figure work, portraiture and landscapes. She gives these disciplines free rein in a vibrant, color-filled expressionism that seems to burst from the two-dimensional confines of her canvasses. She strives for color, composition and imagery that can shake viewers from their accustomed way of seeing.

Cox’s childhood in post-World War II Britain, where war-time rationing continued until mid-1954, was marked by loss and conflict. Her father died, after a painful, debilitating illness when she was only five, a loss intensified because during his illness she was sent away to live with a family of strangers in a Welsh mining town.

Yet amidst tribulation were graces. Many of her memories are pinned in place by color: the pale cream stucco walls of the house, the deep blue carpet in the parlor, the coal black of the family’s Scottish terrier (named, of course, Scotty).

Color is also a vital part of Cox’s vivid memories of her father’s English garden: A small space made magical by the weeping cherry tree, the green and colored riot of flowers and leaves, a tiny dark-watered fishpond with three glimmering fish, a grass path winding its way from the small greenhouse to the herb garden.

“I vividly remember singing to nature, to the birds and to the open air,” she says. “I never minded being alone. Solitude was a place of peace and grace.”

At age 19, she was accepted into what is now Leeds Beckett University, Yorkshire England, with a double major in education and art. She had planned to major in biology but a comment by one of the science professors during her acceptance interview proved to be a turning point. He asked her to describe her work with a microscope. “When I described what I saw in the microscope, he said, ‘you don’t see as a scientist. You see as an artist.’” The first year of art training was both intensive and extensive and confirmed her vocation. “It was then that I finally and fully realized that this – art – was what I had always wanted to do,” Cox says.

In the late 1970’s, she returned to art, starting with pastels in landscapes and figures, expanding to water-based paints. After a friend challenged her by asking whether she was serious about painting as a vocation, Cox applied for and was accepted in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), Boston (now part of Tufts University School of Art and Sciences).

Subsequently, for over a decade, she devoted much of her artistic effort to creating and promoting a non-profit, Travelling Tabernacles. Its’ goal is to bring a new way of seeing “The Way of Salvation” to diverse communities of faith. The collection of nearly 80 works, many of them very large canvasses, can be arranged in up to seven separate groupings. Each installation includes a hands-on, interactive, guided workshop intended to enable attendees to explore their own creativity in response to their experience. These collections have been exhibited publicly a dozen times and seen by an estimated 4,000 visitors.

“One way I evoke the interconnectedness of emotion and spirituality is by creating a series of pieces around a central theme such as Creation, Woman, Transformations, Mystery, and Song.”

Continuing to combine her classical training in landscape, portraiture and figurative art, with her affinity for vibrant colors and expressionism, Cox continues to work in existing series, such as Transcendental Songs, and to develop new series, such as Trees, Seasons and Gardens. Visible in all of them, is her dedication to transvision – seeing beyond the immediacy of the object to its deeper, wider connection to creation – and to enabling the viewer to, at last, behold that transcendent, greater world of grace.

Artist’s Statement

My work is about “transvision” – about seeing beyond the bare facts in front of us to something vaster and full of grace, and about making that invisible reality present, expressive and tangible to others. I strive for this by using classical disciplines in figure, portraiture and landscapes but giving them free rein in a color-filled expressionism. The intent is to create works that seem to burst from the two-dimensional confines of the surface and create for the viewer new ways of seeing.

My subjects typically are drawn from the visible world: trees, flowers, patches of gardens and places, such as a cathedral or a town square in El Salvador. I research these objects extensively to “see” them in full.

I usually paint them in a series, with a central theme, such as creation, woman, transformation, mystery. I abstract the concrete and overlay multiple perspectives, striving to express the “lived” essence of an object and the experience of that object, rather than capture a basic form. I always work on several pieces at once, so I don’t end up doing six paintings on one surface.

To me, color can be tasted, it’s delicious. Although normally working primarily in oil paints I recently began using oils over layers of egg tempera. I apply extensive, thin layers, with an array of brush sizes, building up the colors I want. I control the color intensities and subtleties by controlling both pigment and medium. I usually work large: my smallest works are 30 x 40 inches. But I often work 4 x 4 feet and larger. I have no fear of a blank canvas of any size. I want the painting to transcend the edges of the canvas.

The abstraction coupled with intense colors can seem at first glance almost chaotic. But as a friend said to me: “I can always see form and order emerging from your paintings.” That emergence is ongoing: my goal for the viewer is a painting that, while finished, is not complete and is always inviting the viewer into continuous transvision.

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