It’s rare when both husband and wife are artists, and even more rare when the couple exhibits together. But such was the treat Catskill Art Space gave us at its joint exhibition of mostly large paintings by Jennifer Coates and David Humphrey that unfortunately closed on June 17. Naturally, the temptation is strong to make comparisons. The first impressions are of vast differences, from Jennifer’s glowing use of color, and landscape-based fairy-tale like settings populated with creatures from dreams, mythology or art history, to David’s more graphite color, and collapsed spaces of collaged cartoon-like images referencing contemporary life, media and complex states of mind. But there are similarities too, such as their use of conceptually contrasting images, taken from disparate sources that, as with much Language Poetry, ask us to create our own gestalt of meaning, rather than simply tell us what to think. Also, though Jennifer’s worlds are otherworldly, and David’s much more of our time, for both artists, their art ultimately suggests internal states, suggestions of our individual reactions to contemporary life. At their closing party last Saturday, we heard their band, Phrogz, perform original music that translated their painterly use of contrasting images into contrasts of tones, timbers, and musical resonance against verbal content. With David on the saxophone and bass guitar, Jennifer on violin and ukulele, and fellow artist Tim Spelios on drums and found objects, their sounds were often upbeat danceable rhythms, sometimes serious, other times humorous, often with dialogues between instruments, or between music and words, and always with that juxtaposition of contrasting elements. For a video recording of one piece, go to https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctq80iCvetX/ .