Exhibition photography by Brooke Marsh
James Oliver Gallery presents Out of Line, on view August 16th through September 27th, 2025. The three-person exhibition features works by Tara Booth, Anthony Coleman, and Tim Lahan. Join us for the Closing Reception on Saturday, September 27th from 6-9pm.
Out of Line puts uninhibited and intuitive mark making on display, each artist exploring the boundaries of their medium of choice. Color-filled compositions push the margins with stylized and distorted shapes, icons, and figures front and center. Iterations of memories, objects, and self-depictions bounce around the room, speaking to one another with concise visual language. Booth, Coleman, and Lahan make their mark this Summer, challenging the limits of works on paper in an imaginative and exaggerated light.
Tara Booth, Bras for Sweat Absorption 6,7,8, 7 x 5" each, 2025
Tara Booth is an award-winning comic artist, painter, and illustrator based in Philadelphia. Booth’s often autobiographical comics take candid and satirical jabs at issues related to mental health, addiction, and sexuality. Known for her colorful and bustling compositions, she approaches everyday struggles with vulnerability and a painter’s touch. Booth’s work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Vice, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Best American Comics. Her book, Processing: 100 Comics That Got Me Through It, was recently awarded the Eisner Award for Best Humor Publication.
Anthony Coleman, a self-taught artist, was born, raised, and currently lives in Philadelphia. He began drawing his unique portraits at a young age and has a non-stop desire to create. Tony, which is the nickname he goes by in everyday conversation, would draw on whatever scrap of paper he could find; work schedules, receipts, and notes. If there was a piece of paper in reach, it became Tony’s canvas. Tony's distinct style combines the color and mood of cartoons from the 60s, 70s and 80s with his keen eye for portraiture. He finds inspiration in western movies, circus clowns, high fashion, horror movies, animals and the pop culture of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Tony’s preferred medium is graphite and colored pencil on paper. His finished drawings show colored-over lines and the indentations of erased pencil markings, giving the viewer a vision of Tony’s creative process. He has had solo and group exhibitions around the world, showing at SAGE Gallery, AMANITA Gallery, SPACE 1026, and Studio Cromie in Grottaglie, Puglia, Italy.
Tim Lahan, Field and Bent (2024), soft pastel and acrylic on paper, 15 x 11”
Tim Lahan is a graphic artist living and working in Oakland, California. He splits his time between his studio practice where he focuses on painting and drawing alongside various commercial projects for clients such as Apple, Nike, The New Yorker, Hermès, and The New York Times. His artwork has been exhibited internationally in places like China and South Korea, as well as various galleries in the US.
Lahan’s series selected for Out of Line contrast soft, feathered pastel objects and against harsh confining lines of acrylic paint. Distorted trees and flowers, two-headed animals, and pixel-like shapes create a surreal affect to familiar iconography.
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