Lucy Cohen

Lucy Cohen’s work explores the experience of motherhood through block printing and storytelling.  After a decade away from artmaking, Cohen returned to the practice after the birth of her second child and processes the deep transformations and the daily monotony of parenting through art. 

Drawing on personal experience and working primarily in black and white linocut printing, she
she captures the intimacy and deep physicality

of mother and child and the many facets of the mother’s perspective, whether with children or alone. Through light and dark, movement and stillness, these works deal with complex and sometimes fraught feelings—about children as they grow; children strongly attached and the release of separation; and about her own developing identity. 

In her writing, Cohen creates a collection of breastfeeding parents’ stories, focused on the weaning period.  Through interviews with parents, she crafts narratives illustrating the many emotions and relationship changes experienced in the transition away from nursing.  These stories mark the ways that mothers’ and children’s needs change over time, relationships adapt, and how they are situated within societal structures and expectations around breastfeeding, the role of the mother, work, and family.  She hopes to publish these stories with accompanying illustrations.  

Lucy lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.