BARBARA E COHEN
summer's end-red
Curated by Susie Nielsen, farm projects
November 19 - 29, 2026
Tillies Provincetown
Opening reception: Friday, November 20, 6-8pm
with Music by Ken Field & Sue Goldberg
Gallery Hours: Thursday & Friday 4 - 8 PM, Saturday & Sunday 12 - 5 PM; and by appointment 646-872-8582
New paintings by Barbara E. Cohen turn a red beach chair into a season-long study in stillness
The series began with a single object: a red beach chair Cohen ordered online at the start of the summer. Its seat was a deep cranberry red with pink and orange, with a toothy texture she immediately wanted to paint on, held in metal curves that struck her as "a sculpture in and of itself."
After years of moving, Cohen had finally settled into a year-round home on the water in Provincetown's East End. "I truly did rest from all the past years of moving and travel," she says. Rest soon turned into play, leading her to develop this series, which speaks to her process and love of material and paint.
Folding the chair each evening, Cohen began to turn it, top to bottom, side to side, open and closed. She photographed each position with her Fuji instant camera, then manipulated each photo with oil paint before enlarging the images onto 10x10-inch wooden panels stretched with old sailcloth from Tortola in the British Virgin Islands.
Because the panels had been painted on for years, earlier layers of color push through the weathered sailcloth, giving each work a history beneath its surface. The result is an array of images and markings in which a familiar object loosens into abstraction. As Cohen describes, “The abstraction happens, and all becomes different: form, size, meaning, and material.”
The transformation of common objects, from this chair to a shoe and a Venetian sling, is a recurring theme in Cohen’s work, as is the use of instant photographs as part of this process. For instance, her book, Our Provincetown (Provincetown Arts Press, 2021) paired sixty stories by Provincetown writers with her painted Fuji instant photographs. Summer’s End-RED follows her exhibition at Farm Projects in Wellfleet this past June and continues her involvement with Tillies, where she has curated exhibitions since May.