Gallery > Small Works

As a means of being productive at a moment’s notice, I began using an Altoids tin for an easel, or pochade box. As someone who has always enjoyed trinkets and totemic items, I have really grown fond of the boxes themselves and their resultant paintings. The scale of the paintings has allowed me to learn new aspects of my materials. For example, using brushes that seem slightly too large for the paintings grants me the opportunity to search for painterly solutions on this relatively new scale.

In this series, intimacy and immediacy of scale work together to allow for multiple sources to be transformed with paint. Eagerness to paint combined with portability led to painting on family trips, on breaks at work, and at the dining room table after the kids had gone to bed. I felt compelled to paint any subject that struck me and let it lead to the narrative or visual content that it might reveal. A found eggshell began communicating with lost feathers. My worn-out boots gently reminded me that my wife bought them for me years ago. A banana’s decay became an exercise in daily rendering. Attempts to capture the field beyond the backyard, the intangible clouds, or the immeasurable sea all caused me to consider my own minuscule scale in any given environment.

I believe painting can transform its subjects-—a brushstroke’s reconsideration of a notion or a vision permits such experiences to be worthy of further contemplation and consideration.

The more I paint, the more I am convinced that painting captures, and emits, an ineffable power.

All works are ready to hang. Free US shipping. These paintings are being sold directly from the artist to you.

Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing one of these pieces, or you can click on the blue PayPal price button.
mben.cohan@gmail.com