Cotton Bears Before Hadean's Destruction, 2026, oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches

Aimee Coello is a self-taught artist based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She has worked as a designer and spends most of her time independently in her studio. Her work blends classical painting techniques with a surrealistic, saturated aesthetic.

I create works exploring themes of nostalgia, reincarnation and internalization through non-direct self-portraiture. Inspired by literary nonsense and Lovecraft, my work centers on recurring figures with red hair, unnamed creatures placed within wondrous, surreal environments. They travel through dreamlike settings that serve as passages for introspection. These characters are used to explore the desire to return to moments in the past, reconsider what was said or done, and confront the weight of those decisions. The answers to these questions manifest as alternate realities and imagined outcomes born from impactful decisions. To create these settings, I integrate saturated, rainbow-infused palettes with symbols such as stuffed animals, rainbows, early 2000s child iconography. The result is a series of playful childlike wonders that turns into corrupted nostalgia.

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