Exhibition Don Coen: The Migrant Series runs through May 27, 2019
Artist Talk: Thursday, February 21 from 6-7:30pm
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 1750 13th St, Boulder
Don Coen paints what he knows. He was raised on a ranch near Lamar, Colorado where he was part of every aspect of ranch life, including appreciating the work of migrant workers in the fields nearby. In addition to major paintings illustrating the ranch life of cows, trucks, and animals, in 1990, Coen started traveling to photograph, and to ultimately paint, the hard-working migrants who picked and sorted the crops that become the produce we eat every day. Coen’s dignified realistic portraits are character studies of people connected directly with the land. Coen was first drawn to workers around Greeley in a field ripe with vegetables. This experience sparked The Migrant Series, and it is now a project of nearly twenty years. His large-scale painting technique stems from his early career as an abstract expressionist painter of large colorful canvases. The paintings in The Migrant Series are achieved by skill with an airbrush that allows him to put down large veils of color. These paintings have nearly 60 layers of transparent airbrush paint, and when you get close to them, they look completely abstract. This abstraction harkens back to Coen’s early painting days, for which he credits Mark Rothko’s large color field paintings as an influence. Coen has created 15 larger-than-life scale portraits that emphasize the pride and humanity of the workers; each has a story that is communicated by Coen’s unflinching look at the migrants. “Because I spent my childhood doing the intense manual labor required to run the farm, I have tremendous respect for all the people who work our land,” Coen said. This exhibition is guest curated by Ann Daley. Don Coen’s work is in private and public collections throughout the West, including: the Denver Art Museum, the Phoenix Museum of Art, the Foxley Company collection, the Whitney Gallery of the Buffalo Bill Museum of Western Art, and the Bodin Art Collection in New York, among many others. He received his BA from the University of Denver and his MFAfrom the University of Northern Colorado. Hear firsthand from exhibiting artist Don Coen about his artistic process and the life-changing events that have shaped his work on February 21. This Artist Talk will offer incredible insights into the hard work and meaningful interactions that inspired the pieces in Don Coen: The Migrant Series as well as the experiences that inspired his other works of art. Image information: Don Coen in his studio 2003. Photo by Arden Murane.
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