A selection of recent paintings by artist Genevieve Cohn. Cohn describes her work as walking a line between the real world and one shaped by emotional perceptions. Drawing on historical imagery from the Woman’s Land Army from World War I/II and female separatist communities, Cohn composes imagined communities of women that exist in a time that is simultaneously past, present, and future. In her latest body of work, “Women Like You Build Bowers,” these themes of female power and collaboration are explored alongside the idea of nests, specifically the bowers of Satin Bowerbirds:

“Bowerbirds participate in a unique mating ritual in which the male bowerbirds collect and curate a structure with the hopes of attracting a mate. The female bowerbird then chooses her partner based on the bower that she finds most beautiful. Considering these ideas of collection, adornment, beauty, and choice, I re- imagined this mating practice instead as a community practice. Much like bowerbirds, the women in my paintings collect objects of affinity and use them to construct sacred spaces that engage ideas of ritual and practice.”

See more images below!