Georgia Coxe

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“Roses”
Color Photographs

“The bee and I have something in common!” photographer Georgia Coxe exclaims. Her up close and personal color photographs of luscious, in-full-bloom roses, are taken so close that “occasionally pollen dusts my lens,” she shares. Georgia O’Keeffe once commented that “nobody sees a flower, really – it is so small…” Remarkably, like O’Keeffe, Georgia Coxe has taken the time to really see these roses, “exploring the blossom like a landscape, seeing each individual rose as possessing an “inherent mysticism of composition, colors, tones and textures.” Carefully choosing each individual rose as a painter would choose her model (and these textures are sensuous, fleshy, even corporeal), Coxe invites the viewer to see a flower as they have never been seen before. “Rose Rise III” (12 x 18”) is particularly startling! Here Coxe presents a large dramatic pink coral rose, so perfect, it glows like a heavenly archetype as it appears to sit on a blue sky horizon line, effectually transforming this luscious flowery form into a mountain (or cave, or conch shell) on a surrealist plane. Coxe creates magic here, and all with her ability to shape compositions that transform one natural entity into another, what she might refer to as her “mysticism of composition.” With an old Pentax 35 mm in hand, shooting in daylight and using full negatives, Coxes arranges her hothouse roses in diptychs, triptychs, and polyptychs. As she says, “although they’re grown to look the same, each one has their quirks, ruffles that are really different when you look closely at them. It is what the rose presents to me. They are landscapes with design elements. One petal may corkscrew into another; others don’t.” Coxe squeezes, refracts her composition, intensifying the power and energy of a blossom’s core. This exhibition marks her first “rose show,” and reveals that Coxe, like O’Keeffe, recognizes the inherent mysticism of penetrating a flower’s center. Growing up in a family of artists, Coxe studied photography with Eugene Smith at Indiana University, attended Sarah Lawrence College, the John Herron Art School in Indianapolis, and the Philadelphia Museum School. She has been a working photographer since the age of sixteen, when she had her own darkroom. Georgia M. Coxe is the mother of three, and grandmother of three. She moved to Provincetown year ‘round in 1977. She serves on committees at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, is a member of the Provincetown Art Commission, and a participant in the Visual Artists Cooperative.