Artist Brian Cohen, a Kennebunk resident, will visit Kennebunk Free Library on Tuesday, April 8, at 6 p.m. to discuss his 40-year career as a printmaker.

Cohen

“I began to make prints because I had to; a printmaking course was part of the curriculum of an art program where I was hired to teach; to learn more, I began to make my own etchings and soon fell in love with the medium,” Cohen wrote in a news release. “I learned from books and from gaps in my knowledge that showed up in my early etchings and in my own teaching.

“The craft, history, and look of etching grew on me. Now I look at my work and reflect with some satisfaction that I continued to make art throughout my entire life, and I continue to make art now. I would like my work to be seen.”

Cohen is a printmaker, painter, educator, and writer. In 1989, he founded Bridge Press to further the association and integration of visual image, original text, and book structure.

As a printmaker, Cohen has shown in over 40 individual exhibitions, including a retrospective at the Fresno Art Museum, and has participated in more than 200 group shows. Cohen’s books and etchings are held by major private and public collections throughout the country.

Cohen was an art teacher at The Putney School from 1985 until 2011, where he was dean of faculty and founding director of The Putney School summer programs. In 2001, he helped found Two Rivers Printmaking Studio in White River Junction, Vermont, as its artistic director.

Cohen’s teaching experience has also included classes and workshops at schools and studios throughout New England.

Cohen is the illustrator of two popular natural science books, “Reading the Forested Landscape” and “The Granite Landscape,” and has contributed artwork to literary reviews and other publications, including the Paris Review.

His writing on prints, books, and arts education have appeared in the Huffington Post, Art in Print, Parenthesis, The International Journal of Art and Art History, and other print and online journals and magazines. and other print and online journals and magazines. A retrospective comprising 35 years of his work was published in 2023.

The program is free and wheelchair accessible. Kennebunk Free Library is located at 112 Main St., Kennebunk. For more information, call 207-985-2173 or email us at kfl@kennebunklibrary.org.