"I am interested in the unspoken, unseen — that which lays beneath the surface.  I want the viewer to have their field of vision filled by the painting, to experience that sense of wonder one has when immersed in a world which is usually hidden to the eye." — Claire B. Cotts

Claire B. Cotts is known for her richly layered abstractions that visually blend the forces of disorder and entropy with balance and structure to create pieces of arresting beauty.
 
Her paintings are painstakingly created by using layer over layer of paint, slowly building up the surface and then scraping away to reveal the underlying forms and mark making beneath.  This process of gradual accretion and revision creates “pentimenti”, the ghosts of previous marks and images that still remain, giving a window into the creative process. 

Slowly and intuitively, she creates paintings with rich and complex compositions that resonate with organic shapes and fragmentary bits of memory, emotion, and sensation.

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Cotts lives and works in Berkeley, California. 
She studied art at Oberlin College, received her MFA from University of California at Berkeley, and received a Fulbright to spend a year painting in Turkey.
She has been exhibiting her distinctive, richly layered abstract canvases for over thirty-five years. 
 
Her work has been exhibited at the de Young Fine Art Museum of San Francisco, at BAMPFA-Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, at the SFMOMA Artist’s gallery, the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, MOCHA in Oakland, and at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art.  Her work is included in national and international collections, including the State of New Mexico Public Arts Program, Nordstroms, Pinnacle Bank, as well as numerous private collections and corporate collections.