BRATTLEBORO — Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts, 181 Main Street, presents a gallery-wide solo exhibition, “Brian D. Cohen: A Retrospective,” with an opening and artist reception on Gallery Walk Friday, Nov. 4, from 5 to 8 p.m.
The exhibit will continue through Dec. 11 and features more than 100 etchings, engravings, and watercolors by printmaker, painter, and educator Cohen.
Cohen graduated from Haverford College and completed his master's in painting at the University of Washington. In 1989, he founded Bridge Press and began collaborations with book artists and writers, most notably with the (1)type-caster Dan Carr and printmaker Julia Ferrari at Golgonooza Letter Foundry & Press, Linda Lembke of Green River Bindery, and Chard deNiord, former Poet Laureate of Vermont.
From 1985 until 2020, Cohen was an art teacher at The Putney School, where he also served as Dean of Faculty and founding director of The Putney School Summer Programs. In 2001, he helped found Two Rivers Printmaking Studio in White River Junction as its artistic director.
His teaching experience has also included classes and workshops at schools and studios throughout New England. He is the illustrator of Reading the Forested Landscape and The Granite Landscape, and his artwork and writing have been published in literary reviews, print and online journals, and magazines.
As a printmaker, Cohen has shown in more than 40 individual exhibitions and has participated in more than 200 group shows. His books and etchings are held by major private and public collections throughout the country.
“As I began to make etchings on my own,” Cohen said in a news release, “I fell in love with the medium. I studied books about printmaking, aiming to fill the glaring gaps in my knowledge visible in my early etchings and in my own teaching. [...] My early prints were full of surprises, good and bad; I saw that I would only rarely get what I wanted or expected. [...] I've since made 800 prints and I still don't get what I want. What I learned to love about etching was that my own expectations don't seem to matter that much.
“I embrace themes of loss, futility, destruction, and unexpected redemptive beauty, themes tied to the tradition of printmaking, whose imagery has always tended toward critical commentary and serious contemplation, and often toward humor and irony as well. I am as often inspired by what I read or listen to as by what I see.”
In her gallery essay about Cohen's work, writer Deborah Lee Luskin observes, “In his new watercolors and in his austere, black-and-white images, Cohen invites the viewer to slow down, and in slowing down, begin to see. […] We, the viewers, are the humans who complete the pictures that speak to our humanity and the nature of existence.”
The gallery is open Thursday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. For more information, call 802-251-8290 or visit mitchellgiddingsfinearts.com.