HOLLIS JEFFCOAT

Fort Myers native, Hollis Jeffcoat has been a professional artist, since she moved to France after art school in 1976.  That means continuously painting and continually exhibiting work for 37 years. As Jeffcoat says “… it hasn’t always been easy … but I would not have it any other way.”

Initially a student at Kansas City Art Institute, Jeffcoat’s innate talent and abstract sensibility was honed at the New York Studio School where she studied with some of the great painter/teachers of our time – Philip Guston, Andrew Forge, Meyer Shapiro, Jack Tworkov and George McNeil - and then apprenticed with Joan Mitchell in France for three years. Jeffcoat has lived, worked and taught in France, Canada, New York City and Southwest Florida.  

Jeffcoat’s recent paintings are inspired by the waters that surround her beloved Sanibel Island where she spent her childhood and now lives. Look closely at these paintings and see the nuance and layers of color, the direction and size of the brush stroke, the edges and you will learn about Jeffcoat’s incredible technique; step back to see the movement and beautiful effects of her imagery and feel the energy of the work. Darby Bannard, art critic, professor and painter, who curated a solo exhibit of her paintings in Miami, says, “It is a pleasure to see work like this in these barren Postmodernist times. Enjoy it. It is the real thing.” 

Jeffcoat has had 20 solo exhibits and been in 35 group exhibitions in the US, Canada and France. Her work is in several New York and Canadian museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, The Morgan Library, The Contemporary Museums of Art in Montreal and Quebec City and in the Pierre Matisse Collection.