James Coe first discovered the radiant light and unique landscapes of the outer Cape nearly 30 years ago when he was a graduate student at Parsons School of Design, living and painting for a semester in Provincetown.

Schooled both as an artist and as a naturalist, Jim spent many years working primarily as an illustrator and author of birdwatchers’ field guides (including his 1994 Golden field guide Eastern Birds). He shifted back to painting landscapes and to working in oils about ten years ago. Today Jim’s paintings typically feature the natural settings, farms, hayfields of New York’s Hudson River Valley and Northern Catskills, near to where he lives with his wife and two children. He also travels throughout New England, working in plein air, and painting views of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, interior Connecticut hills and valleys, and coastal marshes, dunes, and inlets from Cape Cod to Maine. In his studio work, he often calls upon his ornithological training to integrate birds into his landscape settings.

Jim’s artwork is featured in the current (Fall 2011) issue of Plein Air Magazine, and has also appeared in Western Art Collector, and Wildlife Art, and on the covers of Sanctuary, Bird Watcher's Digest, Birding World, and The Auk, professional journal of the American Ornithologist’s Union. He is represented in permanent collections of the New York State Museum, Hiram Blauvelt Art Museum, Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Massachusetts Audubon Society, and Bennington Center for the Arts. In September, 2011, he will be honored as the 32nd Master Wildlife Artist by the Woodson Museum, longtime host of the prestigious international “Birds in Art” exhibition.

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