Kohler writes: «With wry humor and a sense of the absurd [Coates] finds these mythic energies embedded in some of the most degraded and cast off of places: the toxic and synthetic chemistry of our fast and mass produced food... In articulating visual antecedents for the foods she paints, Coates isn't seeking the empirically provable or scientific, but rather operates in the realm of poetic imagination, allusion and pleasure in the strangeness of reality. (painters-table.com)
The first thing one notices about this exhibit is the pervasive sentiment of haunted memory and the ways in which images compel us to bring forth our own poetic imagination in order to fully grasp his pure poetry translated into visual form. (brooklynrail.org)
Robert Lowell's poetic imagination emerged from the extremes of New England's weather, its frozen winters and fiery summers. (bookpage.com)