About Micci Cohan

Lower East Side New York Artist Painter Micci Cohan

Micci Cohan, a painter and graphic artist was born and raised in New-Rochelle, New York. She was selected to study printmaking at the N.Y. State Summer school of Visual Arts in Buffalo, N.Y. during high school where she received an Award of Merit. She moved to New York City’s Lower East Side in 1984 to study painting and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design and there studied under many influential artists such as the painter Sean Scully. During her school years she worked as an assistant for several professional painters among them, Miriam Schapiro, one of the founders of the, “Pattern and Decoration Movement”.

She has exhibited her paintings in Chicago, Richmond and several New York City galleries along with creating CD covers and curating art shows. She also has created posters for the prestigious Jean Cocteau Repertory Theater and her work has been auctioned off alongside such famous American and European Artists as Calder, Haring and Miro. Her work is in several private collections in the United States.

Cohan has made the Lower East Side her home base and frequently travels to those places which creatively inspire her most, particularly, Istanbul, Paris, Rome, and Mexico.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My paintings and drawings are looking glasses into the portals of my existence. I was born with a strong need to paint my world, make it visible, tangible, and surround myself with it, learn by it, and share it. At a very young age this need incubated and grew out of a deep knowing that words, point blank, would never be enough for me to express with.

Sometimes the images come from an internal place sometimes they come from the outside world what I find beautiful and love and what’s inspiring at the moment and what best represents what I’m feeling at the time. Faces interest me, the characteristics and art of various cultures, fashion, history, and music, artists of today and artists of the past. There are numerous inspirations nourishing me on a daily basis. NYC has had a profound effect on me, on my art.

In creating a piece, an idea or story will evolve naturally throughout the process and it is at the very end the clarity and the essence of it are greatly felt and at that time I have figured out what the piece is all about. As for materials it’s whatever I feel like at the moment, acrylic, oil, colored inks, charcoal and enamel are my favorites.

I have been called a portrait painter, for the majority of my body of work in the last couple of years seems to be just that, both self portrait and portraits of others. Some people are unknown to me but are part of the story I want to tell in that piece. A lot of the times they are representing me and are there to help express the mood, emotion, idea and so forth.

It is not important really to me if the story or idea behind the painting is understood by the viewer or not, what is important is that somehow the viewer’s senses be stirred up in some way, that the piece be aesthetically pleasing.