PROVINCETOWN ARTIST REGISTRY

 

Jack Coughlin was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, on February 19, 1932. He studied at the Art Students League in New York, 1951-52, and the Rhode Island School of Design where he earned a BFA degree in 1954 and an MFA in 1961. Coughlin was a professor of drawing and printmaking at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1960-1994, when he retired to become an emeritus professor of art.

As a master of both etching and woodcut, Coughlin participated in numerous one-artist and group exhibitions both in the U.S. and abroad, especially in Ireland. His awards included the John Taylor Arms Memorial Prize, the Madson Award for Etching from the Society of American Graphic Artists National Exhibition and the Helen M. Loggie Prize for Drawing from the National Academy of Design.

Coughlin is especially known for creating prints and watercolors which focus on great writers and artistic figures of the past. He is considered a traditionalist who takes a conservative approach to his art. Coughlin also creates etchings and woodcuts of animals of which at least one is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York ("Hyena-Hyenas"). In addition, Coughlin has produced works of sculpture in bronze, using the lost wax-bronze casting technique. Most recently, Coughlin has become interested in painting images of blues musicians. A book, A Brush with the Blues, on which he collaborated is a history of the blues but also contains twenty-six portraits of blues musicians including most of the major blues harmonica players.

His art works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Free Public Library, and the University of Ulster among other museum, university and library collections.

Coughlin's illustrations have been used in numerous books including Thirteen Irish Writers on Ireland, Impressions of Bohemia, Some Sonnets from 'Laura in Death, Mnemosyne Lay in Dust, Twelve Birds, Face to Face and Six Poems. He also created a book entitled Grotesques/Etchings published by Aquarius Press in 1970. His drawings of literary figures have regularly been commissioned by The New Republic.

Text courtesy Luther College, Fine Arts Collection