Lucy Cohen

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

Drawing on personal experience and working primarily in black and white linocut printing, she captures the intimacy and deep physicality of parent and child and the many facets of the parent’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; attachment and the release of separation; and about her own developing identity. 

In her writing, Cohen is creating 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 parents’ 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.