The Joy Is In The Making: Lake Charles & Deborah Coulter

Lake Charles began creating plain air paintings with her two girls when they were children.  When they would go on vacation, each would have their own set of travel watercolors and paper and they would try on most days to just sit somewhere for an hour or so and paint what they saw. Lake says, “It was a way for us to slow down and really experience a place together and be creative.”

Drawing is Deborah Coulter’s passion. According to Coulter, “Its directness and intimacy gives me the freedom to follow a gesture, to access the flow of energy, to play with space. Exploring the subtleties of light and dark is central to my work”. Through the medium of charcoal, Coulter discovers the world of the body: how we relate to the space inside and outside us; how the energy of air, water, fire and earth touch and transform the way we see, feel and move; how shadows of the ribs contain the heartbeat; how starlight rests upon the skin.

Lake Charles is self-taught and over the years has created art in a variety of mediums, including printmaking, botanical drawings, cement sculptures, and stick sculptures. She did murals and faux finishing professionally for ten years in Larchmont and taught decorative furniture painting through Mamaroneck Continuing Education for several years. She has been a resident of New Rochelle for the past ten years and has lived in the area for over thirty years.

Coulter has a BA in Fine Arts, Drawing and Contemporary Art History from Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, and studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and the University of Hartford Art School in Hartford, CT.  She studied art from an early age, beginning at the Hommocks School. She credits the influence of her many teachers as she started a teaching practice giving art lessons to all ages throughout Westchester. Her practice is now in its fifteenth year.