 Helen S. Cohen I began painting in 1995, the year my daughter started pre-school. The motivation came from a dream I had one night about working with my bare hands on a large white wall using buckets of amazingly thick and colorful paint. When I woke up, I knew I had to pursue this vision. What I didn’t know at the time was that this journey would become the most compelling force in my creative life.
My work as a painter has developed intuitively, driven by a love of color and the sheer joy that comes from the immediate, non-cerebral expression of applying paint to a blank surface. In addition to being drawn to rich, dramatic color, I am intrigued by simple, natural forms — the personality, volume and energy they convey in different configurations. I love the varied qualities and gestures of lines — how they meander around the canvas, connecting some shapes, setting others apart. I have recently begun to explore collage and mixed media, and am fascinated by the added texture and dimension they create.
My paintings tend to be joyful as well as mysterious and odd, unfolding as an intimate conversation between the forms, colors, lines, negative space and my inner emotional world.
Some of my pieces come to life easily, falling off the brush in that delightful way paintings can sometimes present themselves. Others come over time and with a lot more struggle, often transforming many times on the canvas, with lines scratched into many layers of under-paintings.
My work has been inspired in recent years by Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Cy Twombly, Gustavo Rivera, and California painters Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff, to name just a few. One pivotal teacher has been Leigh Hyams, an enormously passionate and daring artist who has encouraged me to take risks, to paint from my heart, and to trust myself as an artist. Inspiration also comes from Toni Littlejohn and her “Wild Carrots” studio workshops, and the artists in my two critique groups — audacious, creative people with whom I have been cultivating my voice and developing a more informed visual language. |
