Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 9, 1995 TAG: 9506140017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Her zany, slightly disconcerting painting, "A Game of Dodge the Truck," won the popular vote in the recent Roanoke City Art Show. The show at the Art Museum of Western Virginia closed May 21.
Page Chichester's "Green Night, Covington" was named "Best in Show" when the exhibit opened in March. "Green Night" was the top choice of Jack Cowart, chief curator at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., who judged the show.
Cohan's work also was judged noteworthy by Cowart - who selected it along with four others in March to receive $200 Awards of Excellence.
By contrast, Cohan's "People's Choice" award, which includes a prize of $100, was chosen by visitors to the show, making it both a critical and a popular success.
Cohan was taking it all in stride last week.
"Art is so subjectIve," she said. "You just never know."
It is not her first award. Cohan, who is 32, had previously won a "best in show" award at a Roanoke College exhibit, she said.
A former commercial artist from Manhattan, Cohan lives in New Castle with her husband, David Cohan. They help run an outdoor excursion company called Wilderness Adventure.
She began painting "A Game of Dodge the Truck" in Norfolk - where she attended art classes at Old Dominion University after leaving Manhattan.
"I put it down for awhile. I wasn't inspired at all to do it," she recalled. She finished the painting after moving to Craig County - and was pleased enough with the results to submit it to the Roanoke show.
Cohan described her work as having generally "lots of bright colors, patterns. They're all fun, upbeat, good-to-be-alive paintings. I like to make people smile, because there's so many things out there to make people happy."
With its bright colors and nonsensical touches, "A Game of Dodge the Truck" can certainly do that.
But, like other works by Cohan, it portrays a happiness with gray around the edges. The painting features several dogs on leashes dragging their feckless owners into the street - straight into the path on an oncoming truck. The truck is loaded with cows. On the opposite side of the street, a dog stands alone, applauding.
"They always make it," Cohan pointed out of the pooches and their owners. "The truck never hits them."
The same could not exactly be said of another Cohan painting - "Out for a Family Drive" (which was not included in the city art show). In this painting, Cohan said, a family in an automobile is all smiles, despite the small animal their car has just squashed on the pavement.
"They're all still happy," Cohan said. "It's just part of life. They just keep going."
And then there is "Happy Hour" - where, as Cohan describes it, a group of happy revelers are drinking at a bar, oblivious to the rats, filth and roaches just behind it.
"Maybe they [her paintings] are not happy, in a sense," said Cohan, reconsidering.
Happy, unhappy or both at once, her work has been attracting notice as well as a buyer or two.
Cohan estimated her income from painting last year at $3,000. But one of her paintings, which sold for four figures, hangs in a Richmond hospital. Another is in a private collection in Singapore.
A review of a 1993 exhibit of her works in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger Star said Cohan's paintings point to "the absurdity of everyday life. ... Cohan's people exude a giddiness, a joy in life that is half-endearing, half ridiculous."
Noting Cohan's debt to folk art, the reviewer wrote that the former Manhattanite's paintings "overcome the problems of faux folk with increasingly sophisticated drawing, color and composition."
Cohan, asked which of the other works in the city art show was her personal favorite, said she liked the photographs best. The show included paintings, photographs, sculpture and various combinations of the three.
"Actually, I liked the one that won," Cohan said of "Green Night, Covington." "I thought it was a great photograph."
by CNB