Kristen Coates

When I was first introduced to this Newport residence, a house that was once home to Edith Wharton during an early, formative chapter of her own creative life, I understood that the work ahead wasn’t about decoration. It was about listening. To the proportions. To the light. To the way a family actually moves through their time there and what they need a home to hold for them. That instinct, to observe before imposing, to source what feels inevitable rather than impressive, is at the core of how I work. Pen Craig Cottage and my wonderful clients turned dear friends, gave me the space to practice it fully, without compromise. This month, that project appeared in the virtual pages of Architectural Digest Poland online and I could not be happier to finally share this project with you. The full article and exquisite photographs are in profile. Interior Design & Art Direction @kristencoates Photographer @jmarquephoto Stylist @dorciakelley Architect @cordtsendesignarchitecture Builder @gcc_scott_gallo Cabinetry @krhcabinetmakers Interior Architecture Design Paul Reidt Furniture Consulting @lobelmodern Landscape Design @oconnordesignbuild Featured in @archdigestpolska by Barbara Ruppel Special thanks to @designmedia_paris

When a Victorian home meets contemporary art, you don’t get a period performance, but a well loved and well lived-in home. Pen Craig Cottage in ELLE Croatia. Our second major editorial feature after Architectural Digest Poland, and what strikes me most is how each publication saw something different in the same rooms. AD focused on collaboration, the restoration, the craft, the careful decisions. ELLE zeroed in on the Gilded Age history and how it echoes forward. What I see? How art lives inside architecture. Victorian homes have presence. They don’t need help being special. What they need is a way to feel inhabited, contemporary, human, true to the people who live there, not just decorated for them. At Pen Craig Cottage, we listened to what the home wanted to remain and to what the homeowners needed it to become. The art wasn’t decoration, it was the layer that shifted the space from beautiful to alive. Large-scale work holds rooms with high ceilings not through volume, but through clarity. It creates a calm counterweight to ornament. It lets the architecture keep its dignity while giving the space a contemporary point of view. The most memorable spaces are built through restraint and conviction, through pieces that earn their place and through layers that feel inevitable. This feature tells the real story through imagery: a home with history, made livable through collaboration, made soulful through art. As featured in ELLE Croatia Photography Jacqueline Marque Styling Dorcia Kelley Interior Design and Art Direction Kristen Coates Architect Spencer McCombe Builder Gallo Construction Cabinetry Kochman Reidt + Haigh Cabinetmakers Thank you to DesignMedia

The Pay What You Want Art Sale is a real gift of a process in getting to connect with all of you and chat about artwork in a really fun and exciting way. All reasonable offers are considered for art in the gallery and online, drop me a note over DM or email right from my site. The gallery is open today - Sunday 11am-4pm if you just need to see it in person. When this video disappears the sale does too xo Kristen

I’ve updated the Studio Archive with a group of paintings and pieces I’m ready to part with. Some are older works, some studies, some pieces that have been living in the studio waiting for the right home. The Archive is reserved for subscribers, but if you join the list and send me a DM, I’ll send over a private code for an additional collector discount as a thank you. I always love when these works find their people ✨

How I approach working with a new design client: instead of coming to a project with an idea in mind, a style or concept I want to imprint on a space I like to start in a more intuitive way with one simple question. What do you want it to feel like when you walk into this space? That question changes the entire conversation and I usually find clients have yet to be asked to articulate the emotional brief of their own home. They have been asked to choose adjectives that describe other’ people’s homes. There’s quite a bit of listening on my part here as some clients can answer immediately: calm, exciting, warm, but not cluttered, grounded, grown up, elevated. Others need time to find the language that is honest, but we’re usually able to work together to find that clarity in time. Once we have it, that feeling becomes the north star. Every piece we consider, every edit we make, every trade off we accept has to support that intended experience, the very intention of the home. If it does not, it is not right, no matter how objectively beautiful or “good” something might be. What my clients leave with isn’t just a more beautiful space. It’s the confidence of knowing exactly why it works, and an eye that’s been permanently sharpened. Creative sessions are open now. If you’ve been thinking about your space, comment OPEN (I respond, not on auto) or send a DM, I’d love to hear about it. Photos @photobyshannon

Some places don’t just inspire you, they recalibrate you. This was the first time I visited Fondation Maeght and wandered through Saint-Paul-de-Vence. The day was a gift, taken in slowly, without agenda. The light, the stone, the pacing of the village, the feeling that art and daily life were never meant to be separate things. I had lunch under a Picasso then found myself chatting with gallerists and a few locals. I have a feeling I’ll be collaborating with my new friend Isabelle, also a galleriste and curator, later this year. This is the perfect place for a thoughtful On Holiday guide to the area, where to stay, wander, eat and absorb it all properly. There are certain places that remind you who you are when you slow down enough to notice. Saint Paul de Vence is one of them.

Art Confidential Vol I, Confetti Inspiration. Art Confidential is a monthly release of a single painting from the studio. Each volume centers on one work, truly featured. Rather than a traditional sale, each piece is placed through private bid. Confetti Inspiration holds a sense of movement that feels both spontaneous and considered. A field of color builds across the surface in small, deliberate gestures, each mark responding to the one before it, creating a rhythm that is steady rather than overwhelming. I loved making this piece and the intuitive build up until it felt resolved in color, texture and movement. Beneath the surface, larger passages of color emerge and recede, soft blues, citrus tones, and warm reds that shift in and out of view. The composition becomes less about individual marks and more about the experience of looking and where the eye moves, where it rests, what reveals itself over time. There is a lightness to the piece, a sense of openness within density. It is happy. It carries the energy of celebration, but with restraint more atmosphere than noise. A continuation into my Confetti series and exploration into color theory. Bid through DM or email to bring this piece home, find more details on this process on Substack today XO Kristen

Abstract Florals and Other Bright Waves is one of my favorite installations at the gallery. Florals emerge through gesture, repetition, and abstraction, Confetti In Bloom, Pink Flowers on Purple, and the Forgotten Island Florals each offering a different interpretation of what it means to hold something living on a surface. Alongside them, Ricky Burrows’ Line Drawn Flowers I, II, III bring a contrasting clarity, playful, immediate, and deeply human, with visible traces of the studio embedded in each work. Waves move through the collection as both subject and structure. In Waves and across the surrounding paintings, color behaves like water, layering, shifting, interacting, creating rhythm through relationship rather than form. There is a sense of light here, of motion, of something just out of reach but fully felt. Together, these works sit somewhere between landscape and memory, between observation and instinct. They are about noticing how color meets color, how a mark becomes a gesture, how something fleeting can be held, briefly, in paint. A collection rooted in exploration, held together by a shared sense of brightness and curiosity, and one of my favorite bodies of work ever to hang in the gallery. - Kristen

Travel doesn’t give me new ideas. It clarifies what is already percolating just under the surface in my painting practice. The pacing of a place- slow, layered, intentional - allows me to go deeper. That’s usually where the magic is. like light sparkling on the sea on a very sunny afternoon in Italy. That feeling became so integral to my process I built a whole world around it. Now my work gets to meet me On Holiday, wherever I am. Getting ready to dive into the next chapter XO Kristen

Casa Vogue Brazil featured this stunning Newport home, Pen Craig Cottage. I’m truly grateful to have this work appreciated and shared with so many. [Repost from @casavoguebrasil ] In Newport, a historic US coastal city marked by colonial architecture and Golden Age mansions, this home has been reimagined as a multigenerational family haven. Surrounded by tree-lined streets and a few steps from the Atlantic, the 19th-century residence sought to preserve its architectural heritage while adapting to the rhythms of contemporary life. Designed by @kristencoates , the project prioritized serenity, clarity and an understated elegance, creating a deeply personal and welcoming home. The result balances sophistication and functionality in a calm and timeless atmosphere. Highlights include the library with custom woodwork and the kitchen with an extensive wall of planned cabinets. Works by Angelo Mangiarotti, George Nakashima and Sean Scully, among others, integrate naturally into the home’s everyday life, reinforcing a decor in which art and architecture coexist without flattery. Interior Design @kristencoates Photography @jmarquephoto Styling @dorciakelley Architecture @cordtsendesignarchitecture Builder @gcc_scott_gallo Cabinetry @krhcabinetmakers

Rejection used to feel like proof I’d miscalculated. After years of putting myself out there, I realized it was more significant than that, it was information that I now see as directional. Perhaps rejection looks like not this audience, not this timing, not this framing. But never, not you. On Substack, I’m writing about how rejection became one of my greatest teachers and how I learned to let it redirect me instead of define me. 🔗 in profile and on Substack app: On Holiday with Kristen Coates

Abstract Florals and Other Bright Waves came together so organically I almost missed the opportunity to share it as a collection. Each piece seemed to arrive just at the perfect time adding a new layer of color, a bright wave of energy and tons of abstract florals. A personal fave, a gallery must see XO Kristen Now available in the gallery and online Thank you for the photos @madeline_guimond @skylaradunn and @victoriabh so good to see it all through your gorgeous eyes