"Ocean Series" Paintings by Sondra Cohen
Regular price $600.00Artist Statement:
This series of paintings and drawings was inspired by the photographs of Hiroshi Sugimoto, which affected me deeply. This is, in effect, an homage to his work.
Whereas Sugimoto photographed different bodies of water within a fixed frame of reference, my work represents one ocean, the Pacific, seen from a fixed point in the Presidio of San Francisco, at different times of day and night over a period of three or four years. Each viewing was notated in a diary as to the relationships between sky, horizon and water. Each drawing or painting was worked from memory with the help of these notes.
Over a long time of viewing the same scene one develops an intimate visual knowledge of the changes that take place. Sugimoto’s photographs deal only with value. As a painter, I am challenged by color.
I had no desire to imitate the photographs. I borrowed the concept of a fixed point of reference as a way of both intensifying and clarifying how I am looking at the subject, and what I am seeing.
About the Artist:
Sondra Cohen was born in 1933 in New York City. In 1953, she attended Brandeis University where she studied Theater Arts and Dance. Upon graduating in 1955, she moved to San Francisco where she performed modern dance with Anna Halprin at the San Francisco Dancer’s Workshop. Enamored with the beauty and moody, often dramatic landscapes of the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California, she knew she had found her home.
In 1979 Sondra entered the graduate painting program at Mills College, and received her MFA in 1981. For many years, from her small studio at the Pointe, in the Hunter’s Point neighborhood of SF, overlooking the San Francisco Bay, Sondra created paintings and drawings inspired by the physical beauty of her surroundings. Her art is influenced by atmospheres, quality of light, walks through beloved spots in San Francisco, including Blue Heron Lake in Golden Gate Park and The Presidio. She filled notebooks and sketch books with ideas about how to translate the moods and light into color on canvas and paper.
Her work has been exhibited in a number of spaces throughout the Bay Area, including Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, Sun Gallery Hayward, Gallery Route 1 Point Reyes, San Bernardino County Museum of Art.
In 1995, Sondra began teaching Color, Design and Composition at Santa Rosa Junior College, where she taught until retiring in 2016.
Today, Sondra is 91 years old and lives close to her family in Los Angeles, California. Her work currently lives in homes and collections throughout the United States, bringing inspiration, beauty, and a sense of peace to all who are fortunate enough to experience it.
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