biography
A native of Gloversville, New York, Elaine Cohen graduated the University of Chicago with a B.A. in Anthropology. In Chicago she was influenced by the dedication and brilliance of musicians who had formed the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). For more than two decades she wrote about jazz and new music for publications such as Downbeat, Coda and the Brooklyn Phoenix; and co-authored Unfinished Dream: The Musical World of Red Callender (Quartet Books, London, 1985). During these years she lived in Chicago, San Francisco and New York City.

In the mid-1990’s, she moved to Caspar, a hamlet on the Mendocino Coast in northern California, where she lived in a drafty building behind a co-op art gallery. Her tenancy at the “Tin Palace” didn’t last long, but her newly awakened interest in art flourished. She soon began painting en plein air in the vineyards of Andersen Valley, and reading every art book she could find. By 1996, she was exhibiting watercolors in Mendocino and Sonoma County galleries. From 1998 until 2003 she was development director of Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA, an international printmaking studio. At Kala, she met and was inspired by many prominent contemporary artists who were using both old and new techniques to create powerful images. During these years she also studied with the plein-air colorist Camille Przewodek, and began painting in oil and acrylic.

Since 2003, she has lived with her husband, the artist and sculptor Skip Treglia, in Marstons Mills on Cape Cod.