Barbara Cohen : Abstract Painted Polaroids
March 15th to May 5th
Opening Reception: March 23rd, 6PM to 9PM

Kasini House, 64 North Street, Burlington, VT

Barbara Cohen is a painter and sculptor from Provincetown and New York City. Painted Polaroids are abstract works made on SX 70 and 600 Plus Polaroid film on which Cohen etches and paints with quick, simple strokes. Her expressive compositions are rich in repetitions and order-versus-chaos tension.

Cohen writes, “Throughout my twenty-five-year art career, I have worked with 35mm film alongside my abstract painting and sculpture. Within the past ten years, I have been working on abstract methods to create photographic images that appear painterly and at the same time hold up as photographs. Using SX 70 and 600 Plus Polaroid film, I manipulate the images I photograph as the film is developing, thus creating abstract effects with line. I push the image further by oil painting onto the Polaroid surface. The combination of the line drawn with a pointed instrument which changes the surface of the photograph and loosely oil painting over selected areas of the picture allows for an original multi-image.”

Cohen has exhibited her paintings and sculpture in numerous galleries and museums across the country, most notable at the Provincetown Art Museum (2006); New York University (2005), Fitchburg Art Museum (2004); Sakai City Museum Gallery in Osaka, Japan (2003) and numerously at The Schoolhouse Galleries in Provincetown. Cohen's work is in many public and private collections including those of Werner Kramarsky, Polaroid Corporation, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and the Boston Public Library.

She has received numerous grants including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Artists Foundation MA Fellowship Program, Polaroid Artist Support Program, Blanche E. Colman Award and the Cambridge and Massachusetts Arts Councils. She has been a finalist for the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, New York City in 2003 and 2004. Her drawings appear in the slide registry at The Drawing Center in New York. She received a colony residency to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has published seven books.

Barbara Cohen received her B.F.A. from Tufts University and the School of Museum of Fine Arts in Boston with earlier studies in art history at Oxford University. Barbara lives and works in Provincetown and Manhattan.

"Barbara Cohen : Abstract Painted Polaroids" is the inaugural exhibition of Kasini House, Burlington's newest art center located at 64 North Street in Burlington, Vermont. The art center has a rotating exhibition gallery; a retail-oriented art shop; artist studios and residencies; and a contemporary art gallery representing some of the finest artists in Vermont, New England, and Montreal.