Rona Lee Cohen, Blue Table with Tall Aloe, 2024

Painting is my unruly companion. We have a tense relationship. Painting demands attention from me—and I’m often not sure what to do with that. There is some kind of search going on. There is a groping, a random and also a deeply studied quality to the search. I don’t know what it is but I get a certain feeling when I’m getting close to it, a camaraderie with the painting. A harmony arises within the disharmoniousness.

Each painting is a new relationship. The larger paintings are domestic—tables tippy, household objects recorded and revered in their strangeness. I find, unfind, refind, refine, unrefine. It’s an unpredictable, unsteady process. There is a place where the seen touches the unseen and unravels a bit, moving in and out of something sensible.

~ Rona Lee Cohen