JCogan

John Cogan

During the past few years, John Cogan has placed twelve paintings in the TOP 100 of the Arts for the Parks competition. He has won three awards, including the first ever Collectors Award in 1995 and the Landscape Award of Merit in 1994. Three of his images have been published as posters by Images of America, and a number of others have been used on greeting cards, calendars, and post cards. A one-man invitational show of John Cogan's paintings celebrated the opening of the Henderson Fine Arts Building on the campus of San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico in October, 1994. In 1997 John was commissioned to paint the 60 by 48 inch painting AFTERNOON AT ECHO AMPHITHEATER for the college. In 2000 John was commissioned to paint a 10 foot by 4 foot painting for the new Courthouse in Albuquerque. This painting is on public display in the Jury Assembly Room.In September of 1999 John was invited to join 14 other nationally known landscape artists to paint the interior of the Grand Canyon. A show of the paintings produced during the trip was held at the Forbes Galleries in New York and San Francisco, the proceeds benefitting the Grand Canyon Trust.John was born in Wichita Falls, Texas in 1953. During the first few years of his life, the family lived in a number of places in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. In 1960, they settled in Midland, Texas. It was here that John took his first art lessons, learning the basics of oil painting from local artist Arnold Leondar. After moving to Houston in 1968, John continued to study on his own, painting the landscapes of his native southwest. He experimented with various media, finally concentrating on acrylic. John did not formally study art in school, but concentrated on math and physics. He attended Texas A&M University and Rice University, where he earned his Ph.D. in physics in 1981. But his first love was always painting, and in 1982 he left his position as a geophysicist to pursue art full time. John Cogan's work has recently received international attention, as pieces have been sent to various locations in Europe, and in 2006 ten commissioned sales were made to the Sultan of Oman.

PAINTINGS