Born in Alaska in 1997, Kels Coker began painting in oils as a teenager. In 2024, she traveled alone with only her palette and what she could carry on her back, taking sacred pilgrimages along the western coast of Ireland and tending to cows on the Loire in the rural midlands of France. She paints exclusively from memory or en plein air in a distinctive sketchy, loose style marked by immediacy and dreaminess. She lives and works in Paris, France.