Mixed media paintings by Helen S. Cohen
My studio at Yosemite Place in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood has been my creative refuge for over 15 years, a space in which I delight in the messy, visceral, right-brain world of mixed media painting. Each piece unfolds through a dynamic process of adding, subtracting, balancing and listening. I move between paint, collage, and mark-making, letting the paintings evolve through instinct, discovery and improvisation. Paper scraps, bold and quiet colors, shapes, scribbles and quirky marks — these elements surface and recede as I search for form, rhythm, and resonance.
My development as an abstract painter has been shaped by two other central aspects of my life: my work as a documentary filmmaker and my experience as the mother of a child with a developmental disability. As a filmmaker, I’ve explored creative forms of visual storytelling—approaches that have shaped how I think about abstraction and meaning in painting. As a mother, I’ve been immersed in the mysteries of non-verbal communication, watching language and perception unfold in nonlinear, often surprising ways. That experience has deeply informed my sensitivity to mark, gesture, color, and the underlying emotional currents of visual language.
—Helen Cohen