Coral Woodbury

Coral Woodbury's art is a vehicle for human empathy and a way of addressing social ills. It gives voice to the voiceless and makes visible those unseen. This lifelong commitment to the catalytic force of art has informed her work even beyond the studio - in museums, education, and the addiction recovery and homeless populations. With Revised Edition, Woodbury creates a material intervention in the inherited Western, white, hetero- and androcentric canon. Her chosen ground is Janson's History of Art, the definitive art history tome of the 20th century - which entirely omitted women from its first 29 printings. Coral inks portraits of artist women over pages torn from this myopic volume, making visible artists who have been overlooked and undervalued. When every page is redrawn, the massive project will encompass 617 paintings, and stand as testimony against the consequences of erasure that reach deeply into our culture. Across all her bodies of work, she explores the power of art to reveal the invisible, express the ineffable, and hold the ephemeral.

Born in 1971, Coral Woodbury earned a BFA at Binghamton University before studying painting under two artist-teachers, known together as rosenclaire, in Florence, Italy. She has continued working with their cohort of over ninety international artists, a collective now thirty years strong. Pursuing an MA in Museum Studies (1999) and subsequent museum career has since informed her search for the buried stories of women across time and place.

Her Immaterial and Palimpsest paintings, both with themes of loss and memory, were shown at Boston University, Jamestown Art Center (RI), and Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli during the 58th Venice Biennale vernissage. The challenges of sustaining her art practice, as well as raising her three children, prompted her to look to other female artists before her. Their unjust exclusion from art histories is the seed of her ongoing work, which has garnered international acclaim. Her first solo show was at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in 2021.

Recent honors include Cill Rialaig residency (Ireland); International Mother Art Prize, Finalist (UK); and exhibition at Newport Art Museum (RI). At the World Art Expo 2024 in Seoul, South Korea, Woodbury’s (group) exhibition was awarded the gold medal. Her work is held in public and private collections, including Katrin Bellinger Collection and the Women’s Art Collection, University of Cambridge, England.

Woodbury is represented by Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, and HackelBury Fine Art, London.