Jane Kogan Retrospective

Jane Kogan is a contemporary artist who has been based in Provincetown since 1968 when she was awarded a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center.

This exhibition will examine two major bodies of her work: her Provincetown paintings, which depict many scenes and buildings from “old” Provincetown, and selections of her Amazons series, large paintings created on the cusp of the Feminist Liberation Movement, exploring women in iconic scenes and themes.

DEDICATION

In 2013 my old friend Roger Skillings recommended me for a show at PAAM, and a jury accepted me on the basis of several of my large paintings. Time passed, the pandemic intervened, and finally now I am having that exhibition. Unfortunately, Roger died a few years ago, but I am including the life sized painting I did of him in front of the Fo’c’sle in 1969, and am dedicating my show to his memory and our long friendship.

Jane Kogan

FROM THE CURATOR

On my first Visit to Kogan’s house I was immediately struck by her large abstract oil painting hanging in the living room, Still Life with Black Vase and Red Cloth, from 1971. It felt fresh and current. This is not a painting that can be absorbed all at once, but one that beckons the viewer to study. The painting has an intriguing deep space, cluttered with imagery that appears to be in flux, areas of loose color that allow for breath and transition, and a tilted perspective. All of it hanging together in an intriguing way. So much that is identifiable and so much barely suggested. I thought YES!… this is a painting I could live with and continue to see newly each day.

Kogan is an outspoken feminist who’s work encompasses a variety of media and genres. The large scale oil paintings that make up Kogan’s powerful Amazon Series are the works that inspired Skillings to propose this exhibition at PAAM. They were created in the 70’s and early 80’s. Like the ancient Greek Amazons who were thought to live in lesbian matriarchies, Kogan’s Amazons are strong warrior like women of legendary stature, athleticism, and aggression.

Kogan’s small plein air paintings of Provincetown streets, businesses, and houses are exquisitely executed with the tiniest of brushes. They capture parts of Provincetown in the 1980’s. They focus on the everyday and point to scenes sometimes taken for granted by those who live here…Each is a small masterpiece painted on scraps of wood. Signs, power lines, gas pumps, hoses, trees, and tops of houses peaking up, are details Kogan makes integral to the experience that is Provincetown. They are paintings richly appointed and not absorbed at first glance.

Also included in the exhibition are collages, etchings, and drawings. Photographic collages from the Embedded Series are ripe with Kogan’s humor and commentary. Kogan’s masterful line etchings are deeply bitten, and visually strong yet compassionate. The etchings of Marie are nude, matter of fact, and distorted just so, rich with texture and patterned marks. Kogan’s drawings reflect her continued fascination with pattern and texture, compositions with ever-expanding connections and threads.

Jane Kogan’s work speaks loudly and embodies the artist’s creative being.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jane Kogan was born in New York City in 1939, graduated from the High School of Music and Art in 1956, went on to Brandeis University, graduating Magna Cum laude with honors in Fine Arts in 1960. She studied etching with Harry Sternberg at the Art Students League in New York City, then from 1961-62 had a Fulbright Fellowship to Rome, Italy, followed by a full scholarship to Columbia University, receiving her M.F.A. in 1965.

Kogan moved to Provincetown in 1968 as a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center. In summer 1969 she won a scholarship to the Provincetown Workshop where she studied with Leo Manso.

Past group shows include at Palazzo Venezia, Rome (1962); Brooklyn Museum (1966); the International Miniature Print Show at Pratt Graphic Center (1966 and 1968); Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; “Women Choose Women” at New York Cultural Center, New York, NY (1972); Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA (1990). 

Since moving to Provincetown she has had one-person shows at the Chrysler Museum (1970); the Fine Arts Work Center (1978 and 1982); Ellen Harris Gallery (1985 and 1992); Robyn Watson Gallery (2002); and Gallery Ehva (2010). 

Her work is in numerous public and private collections, including The Art Students League, New York, NY; Hunt Botanical Library, Carnegie Mellon Institute, Pittsburgh, PA; New York City Board of Education, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art Loan Collection, New York, NY; Columbia University School of Engineering, New York, NY; Boston University, Boston, MA; and Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Vicky Tomayko is an artist and printmaker living in Truro, MA. Tomayko teaches at Cape Cod Community College, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and at the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Workshop Program. She manages the print studio for the Fine Arts Work Center during the seven-month Residency Program. Tomayko taught in the Massachusetts College of Art Low Residency Masters Program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown from 2009 to 2014. She was an Artist-in-Residence at the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School in Orleans for ten years. Tomayko was assistant professor of printmaking at Connecticut College, 1979 through 1981, and was awarded a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in 1985. She received an MFA in printmaking from Western Michigan University, and has been the recipient of two Ford Foundation Grants. She is represented by the Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, and the A.I.R. Gallery in New York.