The visual arts representative of the emerging Bangkok noir movement (including the crime fiction of Christopher Moore, Jake Needham, Stephen Leader and John Burdett; and the films of the Pang brothers and Smith Timsawit), Chris Coles is an artist and filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles and Bangkok.  One of the first artists to explore the world of the Bangkok Night, his paintings, in the Expressionist style, are jagged emotional portraits, revealing a raw and primitive layer of the human experience.

Chris grew up on the coast of Maine and after graduating from Brown University, received a Watson Fellowship to spend a year living in the Bajuni Islands off the coast of East Africa where he made a series of voyages up and down the coast in Swahili trading dhows.  He has lived and worked in Europe, North America, Asia, the South Pacific, Australia and Greenland. Chris is also a graduate of the British National Film and Television School and has taken art courses at the Otis School in Los Angeles.  Among the films he has worked on are CHAPLIN, L.A. STORY, RAINBOW WAR and BALLET ROBOTIQUE (both nominated for Academy Awards as best dramatic short), CUTTHROAT ISLAND, ROAD TO WELLVILLE,  ROSARY MURDERS, the SUPERMAN films, OUT COLD, the TV series SIRENS and many more.