Biography

In the fall of 1979, after recovering from a serious operation, I retired from teaching and realized a life-long dream and started painting. At the time, we were living in Beersheva, Israel and I began my new career by going out to the desert each morning to paint. I also studied etching, took a year’s course in papermaking, and attended an evening life drawing class at the French Cultural Center. Together with five other women artists in Beersheva, we worked independently on printmaking processes, renting space and printmaking equipment for one day a week.

In 1986, my husband and I returned to the United States. It was my good fortune to be accepted as a full time student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, America’s oldest Art Academy. The Academy’s four-year program was excellently designed and managed, and the faculty was made up of well known practicing artists. In the last two years of the curriculum, students worked in their respective areas of interest. They received weekly critiques from teachers such as Will Barnett, Sidney Goodman, Liz Osborne, Peter Paone and Jimmy Luders, and monthly critiques from visiting artists such as Edna Andrade, William Bailey, Yvonne Jacquette, Jane Freilicher, Janet Fish, Irving Petlin and Jack Beal.

Since graduating in May 1990, I have been working daily, first on the landscapes that surrounded me in beautiful Chester County, and now in the big sky country of Texas, where we relocated in November 2000. I am constantly exploring new ways of presenting these magnificent natural views.

My paintings have been exhibited in more than 200-juried shows throughout the country as well as in Canada and Mexico. My work is to be found in numerous private and corporate collections, and in the permanent collections of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library, George Bush Presidential Library, Arts Council of Brazos Valley of Texas, the Blaffer Gallery of University of Houston, Stark Gallery, Texas A & M University, Woodmere Museum, Berman Museum, and the State Museum of Pennsylvania.

©2003 Lee Cohen All Rights Reserved