Anita Helen Cohen, a Sustaining Member of Unbound Visual Arts, lives and maintains her studio in Newton, MA. With over 30 years of watercolor painting experience and a never tiring passion for painting the natural world, Anita Helen Cohen considers all of nature art and she portrays this with rich texture and delicate forms. Her work has been exhibited in many group and solo exhibitions in Massachusetts including shows at The Brush Art Gallery, Lowell; Newton Open Studios, Newton Art Association, Marblehead Art Association, Hopkinton Center for the Arts, Concord Art, Wedeman Gallery, Beacon Gallery, Boston.
Anita Helen Cohen has been awarded by the Wedeman Gallery, Newton Art Association Annual Awards Show ( First Prize), Newburyport Art Association, Hopkinton Center for the Arts for their show Art in Bloom, Bonnar Show ( First Prize). Solo exhibition at the Newton Free Library November 2019.
Recent juried exhibitions include The National Association of Women Artists, The Roddy Competition at Concord Art, Newton Art Association Library Show, Cahoon Museum Cotuit MA, Beacon Gallery, Boston MA.
Anita Helen Cohen has been awarded by the Milton Art Museum (Honorable Mention 1998), Beacon Hill Art Walk (1st Prize 2000, 2nd Prize 1998, Honorable Mention 1997), the Marblehead Arts Association (Judges Award 2013) and the Hyde Park Art Association (3rd Prize, 2013, 24th Annual HPAA Art Exhibit at City Hall Plaza, Boston). Recent Juried exhibitions: several exhibitions with The National Association of Women Artists, The Roddy Competition – Concord, The National Awards Show – Newton, Beacon Gallery – Boston, and the Hopkinton Center for the Arts. Recent Awards: Solo Exhibition at the Newton Free Library Gallery 2019, Arts in Bloom – Hopkinton Center for the Arts, Annual Awards Show – Newton Art Association, Bonnar Show.
Her UVA solo exhibit, Anita Helen Cohen till next Spring, curated by Ira-Iliana Papadopoulou, took place in 2014.
Exhibitions: Portraits in Refuge
Her personal artist website is anitahelencohenart.com
Artist Statement
For me, all of nature is art. What is a linden leaf in autumn if not Nature’s painting? Unlikely colors combine perfectly in composition and symmetrical design!
I am drawn to texture, color and form – especially details created by texture. I often see details before I see the ‘whole’, and I find it totally engrossing to get lost painting them.
Watercolors are a natural medium for me. They allow me enormous range – to create delicate, transparent flowers as well as to change textured, hard rock surfaces into softer more accessible, more feminine form.
With my recent work using yupo, the process of ‘chasing’ and ‘taming’ the paint, coaxing it toward more predictability feels magical. I allow the painting to ‘speak to me’. This is a process of discovery in which the painting and I are interactive partners, continually creating images and meaning together.