There’s still time to see Jennifer Coates’ intriguing companion exhibitions at High Noon and Chart Galleries, both up through June 22. Jennifer is a painter of complex thinking, who uses unexpected and opposing juxtapositions to express her concerns, particularly for the environment. Even the intellectualism behind her ideas, involving scientific research, and journeys into mythology and history is surprising, given how painterly and textural her lush imaginary landscapes are. Her ardent greens and luminous reds and yellows contrast against cavernous dark blues and blacks, creating the light of life, while also the dark of death. Her use of acrylic and spray paint is another internal contradiction, as acrylic is a fossil-fuel derived paint, and Jennifer cares ardently about climate change. But apparently, this clash is conceptual and intentional, for Coates says that enveloping her creatures in fossil-fuel-based paint represents humanity’s fossil-fuel suffocation of our planet. In many ways, her paintings are allegorical elegies to a natural world, desperate to survive, but crushed by humanity’s existential addictions. In Jennifer’s paintings, life lives amidst incongruously placed statues of once-powerful ancient Greek gods representing fertility and energy, for instance, Diana (goddess of fertility and childbirth), Pan (god of fertility and springtime), Dionysus (god of wine, ecstasy, fertility, theater), and the Maenads (female followers of Dionysus). These are statues with positive auras and as such, act as hope. However, they also are omens of our impending annihilation, for as gods of a long-dead ancient civilization, they suggest our own civilization can die too. Plus, not only have these gods lost their magic, but in Jennifer’s paintings, many have fallen or are broken. And finally, like many of the other underlying elements, the flora and fauna circling around and growing near the statues, are themselves dual metaphors, as wildlife is exactly what Coates wants to preserve, but many of the represented species are invasive, transported by careless human beings, and ultimately yet another destructive element to earth’s ecological cycles.