Eleanor Cohen, Self-Portrait

Eleanor Cohen, Self-Portrait

Eleanor Cohen (a.k.a. Eleanor Paterson) (1940-2024) was a Jewish-American painter who lived and worked in Buffalo, New York, and Saratoga Springs, New York. Cohen was a beatnik and a feminist who gained momentum during the rise of feminism in the American art scene. Having worked alongside her sculptor husband, Tony Paterson, and more famous peers for much of her life, Cohen’s work is now experiencing a renaissance and is being discovered and celebrated.

Cohen was raised in Boston, Massachusetts, one of two siblings, the daughter of a truck-stop-owner father and a stay-at-home mother. She took classes at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, California College of Arts and Crafts, and Massachusetts College of Art in high school and later traveled through Europe. She applied and was accepted to the Museum School. As part of the original Beatnik generation, she lived in San Francisco, California, and worked at City Lights Bookstore while solidifying her artistic style. She eventually settled in Buffalo, New York, marrying award-winning sculptor-husband Tony Paterson. From then on, she lived and worked in the upstate New York region.

When not raising two children, Cohen spent many years painting while earning a Ph.D. from SUNY at Buffalo and then became a bilingual educator at Erie Community College. She spent her career advocating for women's rights, the Latino community, and Jewish and Native American causes in Western New York.

Many of Cohen’s works are brazenly traditional, while others are imbued with a darkness that predates goth culture. Cohen’s artistic output primarily consists of oil paintings, etchings, and drawings, pulling from a sublime mix of landscape, flora, and the human form. Many of her works are rich with gothic imagery, including elements such as dying or dead flowers, birds, and human skulls.