Interview with Ryan Cobourn
Ryan Cobourn, Garden, 36” x 48”, oil on canvas
click here for a larger view
Interview with Ryan Cobourn
by Neil Plotkin
Ryan Cobourn is a Brooklyn based artist represented by Fischbach Gallery and Ann Connelly Fine Art. Currently, Mr. Cobourn has a solo show, titled “CRAZY NATURE” at Fischbach up until May 25, 2012 and was recently included in the Dark Matters Group Show at Steven Harvey Fine Arts in New York and also The University of The Arts’ ARTUnleashed Benefit Exhibition in Philadelphia. Though Mr. Cobourn’s paintings are more abstract than the majority of artists showcased on Painting Perceptions, his working process is very firmly rooted in direct observation. He draws from life and then works from those drawings in the studio. I want to thank Mr. Cobourn for taking the time to answer my questions.
Neil Plotkin: You’re from the Philadelphia area, and you did your undergraduate work there, but I wouldn’t say that your work feels confined by the traditions of the Philadelphia painters or the traditions of Philadelphia for that matter. Was this a conscious decision, and what do you think accounts for that?
Ryan Cobourn I think going through the University of the Arts—that painting program was much more of a contemporary program. We had so many painters painting different ways, and there was more of an emphasis on doing whatever you like. I think I constructed my own painting program. I spent a lot of time with the figurative painters on the illustration floor. I was really interested in the more rigorous drawing program. I learned anatomy, and I learned painting from life. I took illustration classes and also fine art classes.
I originally started as an illustration major, and then switched to painting halfway through. It really was a self-made program that was designed haphazardly, because I didn’t know that I wanted to be a painter. All I knew is that I wanted to be an artist. So, through that undergraduate development, I developed into a painter. It wasn’t until halfway through college that I realized that I don’t want to do anything other than make paintings. That’s how it happened.
As a student, I was taking art history classes, and I was painting through art history. It sounds crazy. We were studying Renaissance art, and Baroque art, and so I drew sketchbooks and notebooks full of master copies. I did painting copies of Velázquez and Rembrandt. So I was learning painting almost in a linear way for a year-and-a-half or two years, and just developed a repertoire of—I don’t want to say techniques—but I just developed an understanding of how painting related to different time periods.
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