Grammar 1 moves away from reality even further. The oil painting is thick and heavily textured, with only a few brushstrokes. Still, like all Coward’s works, it doesn’t fully leave the real behind, each painting sits somewhere on the spectrum between realism and abstraction, without going completely in either direction. Coward starts each painting by making quick models out of cardboard and papier mâché. These models never appear in the final image, but they shape the process. She doesn’t stick to a fixed plan — instead, each step opens up a new path.

Some of Coward’s paintings use familiar symbols like googly eyes, cash, or rockets to ground them in the real world. However, in Grammar 1, these clues are missing completely, resulting in a looser and open painting.

Coward plays with this mix of the real and the surreal. Her work is playful and bold, drawing on cartoons, theatre, and stories like Punch and Judy, Looney Tunes, and Goethe’s Faust. Across all Coward’s paintings, she embraces mess, movement, and rule-breaking, creating space for surprise and radical imagination.