Janet Coyle

Janet Coyle spent her girlhood summers at an aunt’s house outside Beaufort, South Carolina, where live oaks hung so thick with Spanish moss that the yard stayed dim at noon and the marsh behind it turned mauve at low tide. She has lived among the brick storefronts and rolling hills of Galena, Illinois, for thirty years, yet that tidal marsh remains her subject. Before earning her MFA in Painting at Northern Illinois University, she worked as a florist, a trade that taught her how color shifts as petals open and fade, how a loose arrangement can feel more alive than a stiff one, and how much a single soft tone can carry a room.

Coyle works in watercolor layered with soft ink washes, letting pigment bleed and pool in an impressionistic way that suits humid light, low water, and moss drifting from heavy branches. Her palettes of mauve, sage, and silvery gray bring a calm, breathing quality to bedrooms, reading corners, and sunlit living rooms, and they sit gracefully in coastal or farmhouse-style homes. Below are Coyle’s canvases in our shop, ready to hang.