Welcome to the first Digest of the year. I wanted to write more in December, but I was feeling the season with all my heart and just couldn’t document or articulate any of the vibrant love beaming from every direction. I just wanted to bask in the Light of my engagement to Michael and enjoy all the time with friends and family. It was a gift I will cherish forever. With that said, I am very excited to be well into the first week of the new year with so many projects on the verge of coming to fruition. There’s just so much to celebrate these days!

Confetti, Daydream By Kristen Coates

By New Year’s Eve, Michael and I were partied out and felt the evening was better spent at home. I spent some time painting a new Confetti painting in a color combination I’ve never used. One of the colors was a mocha mousse from my dear friend Kim from her “what to give Kristen Coates as a hostess gift, a designer kit obviously”! I loved adding a new color and I painted this piece on New Year’s eve listening to Oprah’s podcast about loneliness (this was just what was in the queue and I’m grateful not to be lonely, but it was incredible to hear these peoples’ stories). I finished the piece on New Year’s Day and really felt something special coming from the canvas. I hope this painting goes to someone in need of a little hope and happiness because it is beaming with some seriously brilliant vibes. And big thanks to Kim for encouraging me to use a color I’ve never even considered before. I’m a better artist for it!

Also on New Year’s Eve, I sent out a newsletter seen by some… there are some changes in privacy with email platforms and the way emails are being received, sadly mostly as junk, but I think it may have been lost in the mix of end of year emails and New Year’s festivities. I am including some of that newsletter here in my blog for those of you who did not see the message. Scroll on if you were one of the few that saw it. 

In the gallery

Friend to the gallery and artist Michael DeFeo, known as @theflowerguy on social media and beyond for his well known flower paintings he’s been evolving for decades, is opening his own gallery. He says on his instagram post that due to increasing rent prices, he plans to open a gallery in his studio space for the remainder of the lease. It’s always sad to be faced with these types of changes, but I love the creative endeavor to do something different and possibly more inspiring in response. Follow Later Days Gallery on IG along with me. It will be interesting to see what Mr. DeFeo has in store for his opening on January 22 in NYC.

As for my gallery, you might notice some shifts in the coming weeks as I transform the gallery into part showroom, part artist studio. I am very interested in making the space more meaningful in the winter months as a place where I can paint and experience a different location, with different light, but also continue to connect with all of you. There’s a large sculpture that I am hopeful to construct inside my gallery to support a long brewing art project that I am just about ready to share, almost there.

I encourage you to grab a cup of coffee as I mention in my New Year News post, and come see me at the gallery. You will be the first to see the new work I am making and there will always be things to shop, only now they are more intentional and so much more aligned with the life I live and want to share with you. 

Here’s to a beautiful, fresh start to what is already promising to be a fabulous new year, cheers friends. 

 Live your most extraordinary life as soon as possible.