Daily Inspiration: Meet Oli Coyle

Today we’d like to introduce you to Oli Coyle

Hi Oli, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was born July 6th, 2003, in upstate New York. After graduating high school, I made the big decision to leave home, and moved out to Denver, Colorado, to attend the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design (RMCAD). I mainly work in mixed media oil painting, focused on expressing my identity as a gender non-conforming person through surrealist self-portraiture. I currently have a Spivak student residency on the RMCAD campus, where I’m building a body of work surrounding this theme. My art has been displayed in the 59th and 60th RMCAD Annual Student exhibitions, as well as the 2nd and 3rd RMCAD Annual Student Symposium exhibitions. My first solo exhibition, Soul and Body, opened at Rude Gallery this past June and will be ongoing until August 16th

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has certainly not been smooth – picking up my life and moving halfway across the country for school has created a lot of challenges for me. I struggled a lot with homesickness, missing my family, and making friends. As a nonbinary person, it’s hard to meet new people and connect with them, especially when they don’t really understand my identity. It has created great feelings of alienation and loneliness for me. However, the connections that I have made have been great, and I am able to use also those feelings, positive and negative, to fuel my artistic practice.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Although I am trained as a traditional oil painter, my current work pushes the boundaries of a two-dimensional painting surface into a third dimension with the use of mixed media and illusion. Pushing the boundaries of what a painting truly is mirrors my desire to push the boundaries of gendered social conventions. As a queer non-binary individual, my work heavily revolves around my identity and the role identity takes in my life. I explore the societal, political, and personal aspects of what it means to be a gender non-conforming being in a world that so deeply values conformity.
Many of my pieces employ my own body in the nude as to highlight the intimate nature of this type of self-expression. The vulnerable feelings of exposing flesh that is typically hidden are akin to the feelings of divulging my gender identity to new audiences, especially when wider society would prefer that I keep it to myself. There is a freedom in living one’s truth to the fullest extent, but there is also pain and alienation – it is a dichotomy that thoroughly underlines my practice. This is exemplified in a recent painting of mine titled Rend My Body Anew, where the violent ripping of the body and canvas stands opposed to the natural beauty of the plastic flowers pushing through the void in the canvas.
The process through which I ideate my work is one of self-reflection. I isolate certain feelings I want to explore – such as fear, dysphoria, rejection – and dig deep into why those feelings exist. Often, they are a reaction to the prejudiced political climate in America, where gender non-conformity is seen by many as not only nonsensical, but also a potential threat. Judith Butler, gender studies scholar, states that “social categories signify subordination and existence at once. In other words, within subjection the price of existence is subordination.” To exist between such contentions is to face many struggles, and by way of painting I attempt to reconcile those struggles while also bringing them to light for others.

My proudest accomplishment so far is my first solo show, Soul and body, currently ongoing in the Rude gallery.

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Yes – when I first started at college, my art didn’t really have a lot of direction or connection. It wasn’t until the end of my junior year that I was taught about something called “the thread.” The thread is essentially the underlying theme or concept included in all your works that tie them together, and make them undoubtedly yours. If I had learned about this concept sooner, I think I might’ve started to make my body of work more cohesive sooner. My advice to all young or new artists is to find this “thread,” whatever it may be.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/art.by.livvv/

Image Credits
Oli Coyle
Deborah Coyle