Shoshana Cooper

Shoshana Cooper was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1958, raised in Hamden, Connecticut and majored in Judaic Studies and Sociology at Brandeis University. Since 1986, she has been working for the New York City Transit Authority, where she is now the Director of Operations Analysis.

In 1990, at age 31, Shoshana decided to enroll in a continuing education class at Pratt Manhattan in Oil Painting. This class showed her art would soon become her obsession in life. She began studying at the Art Students League, where she found a supportive environment. Her teachers at the League included the late John Hultburg, a former student of Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Richard Diebenkorn and with Fred Mitchell, a native of Meridian, Mississippi, who was one of the pioneers at Coentes Slip in lower Manhattan with Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin.

I started painting, at first using oil paints, in the winter of 1990. Later, I tried acrylic paint which I found offered greater flexibility. As my work evolved, I began to abstract from the world around me while maintaining some figurative elements.

In November 1996, after seeing the Jasper Johns show at the Museum of Modern Art, I became intrigued by several of Johns ...