July 15 – August 25, 2025

Joanna Cotler is a New York City artist whose work in paint, col lage, and mixed media blurs the l ine between narrative and abstraction. She has studied painting for over three decades with artists including Leigh Hyams, Sam Feinstein, and most recently with El izabeth Al l ison at the Art Students League. Her work has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco, and Mexico, and is held in private col lections international ly.
Born into a fami ly of writers and artists, she is also a former publ isher of bestsel l ing and award-winning chi ldren’s books. Her current practice takes place in her Upper West Side studio, where she creates work that she hopes transforms the everyday.

Read Joanna’s interview with Mark Rifkin from the SubStack
this week in new york: mad transit

ARTIST STATEMENT:
“Forms of Belonging presents a series of shaped paintings that imagine what life might look l ike if it moved toward harmony—where difference and complexity aren’t obstacles but invite deeper connection.

Using water-based paints and mixed media on cut, layered paper, the artist creates imagined beings and fluid forms—hybrids where plant and human intertwine, where identities expand into new l ife forms that express the joy and privi lege of being alive.

In these works, the boundary between human, organic, and imagined dissolves. Drawing from observation of nature, friends, and strangers, the artist explores how our forms— both physical and relational—might shift in response to a more tender way of seeing. What new ways of being emerge when we embrace our constant state of becoming? This work is a proposal : that transformation begins not with certainty, but with the radical act of imagining otherwise.”

Please Note:
– pieces available for purchase by clicking on titles
– available for local pickup ONLY at wild project