Sirocco

About Sirocco

This large contemporary abstract acrylic painting is colourful.

At just 12 years of age, Adam Cohen took his first art class. But the American artist only began painting abstracts at age 50 having spent years as a very successful commercial artist. Cohen is known for his grand gestural style—a hallmark of abstract expressionism. He relies on intuition for his eclectic colour choices as evident in this powerful composition rendered in swaths of orange, pink, white, blue, green and gray. Cohen’s distinctive expressive style is created using layers of thick paint that he cuts into with a palette knife when it is wet. This impasto method adds rich texture and accounts for the dynamic sharp lines that crisscross the canvas. The painting is aptly named Sirocco after the hot desert wind that blows from North Africa across the Mediterranean to southern Europe.

“I also get a thrill out of the drive that is in me. There’s this powerful pull and struggle to express myself. Like a writer, film maker or musician. There’s the powerful need to have a vehicle to express through.” Adam Cohen

“His fields of colour and texture have the breadth and openness of the openness of the sky or aerial views from the earth’s surface.” Carter Ratcliff, Art Critic

Adam Cohen studied at Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art and lived and painted in Rome for years. After many years as an illustrator in NYC, he returned to his first love--painting. Adam Cohen lives and paints in the Catskills, NY. Cohen has exhibited extensively in the US, Europe, Asia and most recently in Amsterdam, Venice and Long Island, New York.