Art Beat: Shining a light on SouthCoast painter

Dan Cooney

Don Wilkinson

It’s easy to get lost in a crowd.

SouthCoast painter Dan Cooney learned that at an early age. As the second child of eight children, all born within a twelve year span, he instinctively grasped for something that distinguished him from his siblings. What he reached out for — and clung onto — was art.

His mother was a writer who stocked the dining room table with stacks of paper and a box of crayons, pencils and paint. As soon as breakfast was done, Cooney would be there, getting lost in that dream zone of childhood creativity, making one drawing after another.

Sometimes, he would be given a subject prompt by his mom, such as “happiness is…” and his response would be a pile of colorful drawings in an attempt to illustrate just that.

Cooney remembers enjoying the attention of Mrs. Volkswen, an elementary school teacher, and the “office ladies,” who were enchanted by his drawings. It was attention that was sparse in a home with so many siblings. He found a way to stand out.

Cooney was born in Gardener and his family moved to New Bedford when he was seven. At the age of ten, his father signed him up for Saturday morning art classes at the Swain School of Design.

With the encouragement of his parents, he would return as a freshman college student, jumping right into the school’s foundation program, which embraced life drawing, two- and three-dimensional design, color theory, art history and the Western literary canon.

Exposed to all of the four major concentrations Swain then offered — painting, printmaking, sculpture and graphic design Cooney became an accomplished draftsman and painter.

But ultimately, he opted to major in graphic design, with the understanding that a sharpening of the skill set needed in that particular field would further strengthen his painting. It would also provide a channel to the business world and greater occupational opportunities.

Cooney received his BFA in 1981 and his first graphic design job was in the advertising department in the now long-defunct Mars Bargainland department stores. Additionally, he began to do freelance design work for a bevy of clients that included WSAR/WPRO, Center Jewelers, Luzo Bank, Whaling City Cable Television, and the City of New Bedford.

In the early 80s, Cooney shared an apartment with painter George Guavin, who became a close friend, mentor and major influence on his life. Cooney moved to San Francisco in 1984, (where he took art classes at a number of Bay Area colleges, culminating with an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989). Gauvin moved to Paris in 1986 and Cooney was invited to visit him in France.

That casual invitation would be fateful. On the way to Europe, Cooney had stopped to see another friend in Iceland, and met a woman on the plane to Luxenberg. Due to late arrivals and a missed train connection, they ended up as traveling companions for eleven hours, sharing planes, trains, buses, meals and music (his Tom Waits, Talking Heads and U2 and her classical works.)

Christine Foubert became his wife. They now have two adult sons, Austin and Keenan.

Over the years, Cooney had a brief stint as Communications Director of Curry College, and worked as an adjunct professor of art at both Bridgewater State University Massasoit Community College. In 2008, Cooney and his wife Christine entered a different kind of partnership when they founded Heavenly Spirits, LLC.

Their company is an internationally renowned importer of artisanal French spirits, with an always expanding, finely curated portfolio that includes Cognac, Armagnac, Calavados, absinthe, pastis and more.

And through it all, Cooney has continued to paint and engage in other visual arts, including sculpture and pinhole photography.

His creative process is often in flux, continually evolving, with regard to style, subject, content and form. The transitions are brought about by circumstance, current interests or his “actual need.”

In Cooney’s opinion, the emphasis at Swain was to remain focused and continually “refine a specific cohesive and consistent visual language...and stick to it.” Acknowledging the obvious rationale behind that approach, he feared being enslaved to it.

He prefers the advice offered by Joan Brown, one of his professors at Berkeley:

“Find a bone to chew on, then stay with it, at least until you reach the marrow. When you’ve gotten all you can out of it, then you move on to another challenge.”

Embracing that wisdom, Cooney’s oeuvre includes landscapes, portraits, geometric abstractions, political art, floral works and many, many cows.

The success of Heavenly Spirits has allowed the Cooneys to purchase an old vineyard farm property in the Cognac region of France. Under renovation, they hope to transform it into an artist retreat and study center by 2022. Beyond being a place where their American clients could mingle with the French spirit producers, they would like it to be a haven for creative folk to visit and relax and recharge.

With thoughts of offering opportunities to engage plein air painting, ceramics, pinhole photography, writing, wine tasting, and basic French cuisine, Cooney and his wife have fully embraced the truly artful life. And they’re never lost in the crowd.

One of the silver linings that I have seen during this COVID-19 Pandemic is that creative types who have a home studio, have had the opportunity to use it more often these past couple of months, myself included. There is certainly something positive to be said for painting every day as opposed to squeezing it in when life allows. Not only has my output increased, but I believe both quality and sales have increased as well. Following is a collection of work produced or finished since mid March, 2020.

Lakeville Artist, Completes Memorial Art Work, 40 years in the Making

By Daniel Cooney

“Friends For Life” is an exhibition that started with a collection of artwork originally assembled between 1977 and 1980 by a dear friend of the now defunct, Swain School of Design, Arthur Francis Lopes. Arthur was a single, retired, disabled veteran, living in a 2 room apartment on 7^thStreet, who befriended a generation of Swain Art Students, collected their art work, became part of their world, then suddenly died in November of 1980. The students were naturally saddened by the loss of their good-natured neighborhood friend and no one was quite sure what would become of the unique collection of art he had so lovingly assembled. 

Unfortunately, Arthur’s only surviving family member, a half brother, retired from the NB Fire Department was unable to care for the more than one hundred pieces of artwork. That is when the idea of preserving the collection came to me.  Despite being well into my senior year of college and not knowing where life would be taking me afterward, I proposed to take responsibility for dealing with the work and Arthur’s brother gratefully accepted. After initially offering anyone who had work in the collection to take it back or allow me to keep it as part of Arthur’s legacy, I inherited approximately 50 pieces of mostly student work. I promised myself that one day, when the time was right, I would try to organize a proper memorial exhibition, celebrating Arthur’s generous spirit and his love of collecting ART and artists as friends. 

Forty years later, it seems ironic that all those young college art students who in essence adopted that “friendly, old neighborhood character” are at least six years older than Arthur was when he passed away. It seems clear that the lessons we learned during our college years didn’t always come from the classroom, and our time spent in Arthur’s Gallery apartment is a perfect example. Many of those who knew Arthur took the lessons of his “friends for life, always room for more, we’ll find a way to hang it” zeal with them when they left Swain. 

Despite challenges of budgets and space, many of my former classmates have continued to collect the work of friends and associates. I for one, have done my best to care for and grow the Arthur Lopes collection over the years. Through purchases and trades with artists, both locally and from other parts of the world, I have more than doubled the total number of works in my collection.

Over one hundred pieces are now on display in the “Friends for Life” exhibit at the Gallery X in New Bedford MA until the end of June. In addition to work inherited from Arthur Lopes, the collection now includes paintings from my Grandfather, George B. Donohue, drawings from former teachers, like Stacy Netherland, photographs from former students of mine, and assorted other work from artist friends from around the world. In an attempt to capture the ambiance of Arthur’s original 7^thStreet apartment from the late 1970s, I recreated his apartment/gallery space with the original work hung salon style, the same way Arthur did. 

Many Swain alumni attended the opening reception on June 1^stand commented positively on the effectiveness of the exhibition. Concurrently, another Swain School of Design related exhibition, “Three Roads Crossing” is showing in the space upstairs at Gallery X. There will be two additional receptions at Gallery X for both of these exhibitions: the first will be on Aha Night, Thursday, June 13, 5- 8 PM, when you can also enjoy the music of Mike Laureanno, an award winning singer/songwriter from Fall River, MA starting at 6:30 PM. 

The last and final chance to see these exhibitions will be at the closing reception, Saturday, June 29^th, 5:30 – 7:30.

Please contact Gallery X or visit their Face Book page for additional viewing times.  

Information on the work of Daniel Cooney can be found at: www.dcooneypaints.jimdo.com 

I have had the good fortune to spend quite a lot of time in France over the past thirty years. Much of that time is during the months of June and July, when the sunflowers are in full bloom. As a painter, I am naturally drawn to a sunflower’s color, form, historic context and optimistic symbolism. As a result, these strong and lovely flowers have become the subject of many paintings for me, as well as an on-going series that I continue to explore and feel challenged by. While sunflowers are not the only subject that I paint they are indeed one of my favorites.

Four of these sunflower paintings are on display at the Osterville Art Gallery, until the end of the year. They are located in Osterville, MA, 8 West Bay Road, phone: 774-994-1910

I was happy to be invited to participate in a juried exhibition called "Nocturnes" at the True Grit Art Gallery in Middleboro, MA. All three of the paintings I submitted were accepted. It is a theme I enjoy and have visited before. I used to love painting night time cityscapes when I lived in San Francisco between 1984 and 1994. The opening reception is Saturday, November 18 from 6-9 PM. I hope to see you there.

This painting is called "Croustillions" and was inspired by a visit to a small village in Normandy in 2016.

Daniel Cooney

Color, Space & Light

A Selection of Paintings 2002-2012

Colo Colo Gallery,

New Bedford, MA

July 10 – July 30, 2016

Contact: Luis Villanueva: 508 642-6026

Preview Reception Saturday July 9, 5-8 PM. Refreshments and music will be provided. The public is invited.

Fine Art Painter and Lakeville resident, Daniel Cooney, will be exhibiting over two dozen paintings this July at the Colo Colo Art Gallery in New Bedford, MA. The title of the exhibition, “Color, Space & Light,” refers to the painterly vernacular with which Cooney has been expressing himself throughout this series of work. One can see clear influences from painters like Hans Hoffman and Richard Diebenkorn. With angled lines and geometric shapes of strongly worked color, Cooney attempts to transcend the illusion of representational imagery and connect it to a full embrace of two-dimensional painterly space. Tackling mostly landscapes, as well as a few still-lifes in this group of paintings, it’s clear from seeing other work in his studio that Mr. Cooney has used this painterly approach to investigate figurative compositions and portraiture as well. “These paintings are indeed abstract, but I think they maintain a clear visual connection with where they came from,” states Cooney. “In fact, my hope is that I have succeeded in providing a visual bridge that will take the viewer from one way of seeing things boldly into another,” he adds with a smile. 

With Fine Art degrees from both The Swain school of Design and The University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Cooney has been making and selling art as well as teaching, (most recently, at Bridgewater State University) for most of his life. This two person exhibit which will also include a 3-D artist, is a sort of homecoming for Dan Cooney as he spent most of his formative years growing up in a house on Arnold Street with his seven brothers and sisters in New Bedford’s west end. He graduated from New Bedford’s Swain School of Design in 1981 and worked as a painter and a graphic designer in the city until 1984. Between 1984 and 2000 he was mainly living in two places: San Francisco, CA and La Rochelle, France. Dan and his wife Christine moved to Lakeville, MA in 2001, where they raised two boys and started Heavenly Spirits, a business that imports and distributes French wine and spirits. He stopped teaching and slowed down his painting production in 2012 due to the demands of the business, but is looking forward to returning to his painting studio with renewed vigor in the years to come.

Due to time spent building our little import business, (Heavenly Spirits) and time spent raising the boys, there really has not been very much time left over for me to paint and make sculpture these past few years, but I am beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel and I’d like to make some room in the studio for a new series of paintings. With that in mind, I've culled through hundreds of paintings, drawing and sketches produced over my thirty year career and I'm making them available for one day only at up to 70% off gallery prices. On top of that, I will donate 5% of what ever sells on that day to the Lakeville Arts Council. “I am very proud of what this dedicated group of cultural volunteers was able to accomplish for the town of Lakeville during my term as chairman, and I am also very pleased at how they have been able to keep it going since I stepped down. I encourage everyone in the region to appreciate, recognize and support this annual celebration of community based arts and culture. The Lakeville Arts Festival takes place Saturday, September 29, from 9:AM to 4:PM. Dan Cooney’s Open Studio will be held the same day and it is Located at 59 Main Street, Lakeville, MA .

In addition to completing a large scale version of one of my own paintings, this 7th version of The Lakeville Arts Festival (2011) had me once again organizing the Street Painting Demonstration event, but this time it was interactive. We actually had over twenty different teams of kids or families complete a painting. While the "donate $20. and draw" concept did not quite catch on with many artists we didn't let that keep anyone from participating. We even presented certificates of participation and or ribbons to most of the artists who completed a work. The festival is now run mostly by craft people so not sure if fine art will continue to be welcome next year. We will see.

Five painters and a cyclist just completed this year's Painters Working Retreat. By all accounts it was a productive 10 day stay in Rural France. The coincidently all male group resided for most of the retreat at a former Monastery that dates back to the 5th century and this became in part a theme for the Retreat. Offical sound track was Leonard Cohen's CD, "Songs From The Road." Official Prayer was "The Painter's Morning Prayer," by Giorgio DeChirico. Day trips included Roman ruins in Saintes, the city center of Cognac, the Island of Re as well as visits to at least a half dozen ancient churches. Our nearest large town was St Jean D'Angely, said to have housed the remains of Jean the Baptist at some point in history and might still.

All this, plus excellent weather, an endless variety of French argricultural tradition, a talented and flexible chef named Pascal, a wonderful dancer/model named Lucie and we had an ideal atmosphere for painting in plein air.

Please click on the following links to see more of the work done by this inspired group.

Dan's image gallery

Sebastian's Blog: http://sketchpistolsbayarea.blogspot.com/?zx=79db23a3e2f5c56d

Spence's Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24112452@N00/sets/72157627072705132/

Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q&feature=relmfu

Reservations are now being accepted for the 2011 Artist's Summer Retreat in rural France.

The dates are from Saturday, June 11 - Monday, June 20. Sign up now to reserve your place. A maximum of twelve people can be accomodated. We will be spending 10 days and 9 nights in or around the wonderful historic town of La Rochelle, France. The retreat package includes ground transportation from the moment you arrive at the historic LaRochelle Train station and throughout your stay. It also includes all breakfasts and six complete dinners featuring regional cuisine.

After seven years of offering these wonderful cultural get-aways to France I took a couple of years off to work with my wife Christine launching Heavenly Spirits Imports www.heavenlyspirits.info and spending more time with my two sons.

This year I needed to be in France for a wedding and for VinExpo so it was the perfect opportunity to offer another Plein Air Painting Retreat. Having had the pleasure to host close to a hundred artists and art students for workshops and retreats in this region of France over the years I appreciate so much the response from those who have attended and have asked me to do it again. It is really a great pleasure for me to share the experience of eating, drinking, painting, learning and living in France. I still get calls from folks who tell me it was the best travel experience they ever had.

At this point we have enough to make it a go but there is still room for a few more. Perhaps this is the year you join us.

For more information or to sign up, download the following PDF documents or contact me at workshopsink@aol.com.

I am posting photos from past trips.

All the Best,

Dan, 3/7/2011

Here is where we will be staying in 2011:

http://www.levieuxmonastere.com/

The fifth Annual Lakeville Arts & Music Festival took place on Saturday, October 2 of 2010 and it was a great success attracting the most visitors of any year so far - approximately 3,000 throughout the day. One of the highlights of this year's festival was the Street Painting Demonstration, a component I designed and received a MCC grant for. The idea was to show the public a variety of artists with different skill levels successfully completing a street painting (chalk drawing). The list of artists included my good friend Joel Yau, a professional street painter who returned to festival for his second time in four years, two of my former Bridgewater State University drawing students Melonie McGrath, and Elena Murphy,  three nine year old artists, Keenan Cooney and his friends Michaela, and Nolan, and myself.

The demonstration had the desired effect in that visitors insisted on having the opportunity to make their own paintings. Soon folks were borrowing some of our pastels and producing drawings anywhere they could find room. Next year the hope is to turn this creative desire into a fund raiser by selling a square and a pack of pastels to anyone who would like to complete their own painting and possibly compete for a prize.

Following is a gallery of photos from this year's demonstration.

Yesterday, October 7, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Ati Gropius as I participated in one of her Bauhaus / Black Mountain College inspired workshops. This workshop was held at Bridgewater State University and organized by Don Tarallo an graphic design instructor and colleague of mine. Ati is the daughter of Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school. She studied with Joseph Albers among others at Black Mountain College back in the 40's or 50s and used the workshop to share some of what she expereienced there. It was an eye opening workshop in that it put the participants in a position to question and re-examine the most basic components of our art and our materials.  Working with blank pieces of copy paper Ati had us question what we were looking at and pushed us to describe it in the most fundamental ways. Through the process we had to get rid of our assumptions and expectations and learn to start seeing anew. She said it was important the we "know what we are dealing with before we do something to change it." I think these are wise words. For more on Ati's workshops check out this link: workshop   http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/hands-on-the-gropius-touch/

We just returned from a short trip to New York where our primary purpose was to participate in the annual VOS Selection Grand Portfolio Tasting held at the City Winery, in SOHO. VOS is our distributor in New York for our Heavenly Spirits products. But, while we were in town we took advantage of the exceptional Spring weather and got over to see the Whitney Biennial exhibition over on Madison Avenue. The Whitney Museum of American Art has always been one of my favorite museums in New York, and this was the third Biennial I've had the opportunity to see. To sum it up, I consider this 2010 version about par for the course; an overall thin but varied collection of current American art and artists; a strained mixture of conceptual installation pieces, sculptures, paintings, drawings and short film work, some of which were only very recently created.

Work that stood out to me includes: the Drawings of Dawn Clements, a painting by George Condo, a series of paintings by Maureen Gallace, the work of Jim Lutes, Hannah Greely, Stephanie Sinclair, Josephine Meekseper and the oil on linen work of Lesley Vance.

The mosaic piece I had been working on throughout the summer in collaboration with Artaic is finished, framed, hung and available for sale at the L'Attitude Gallery on Newbury Street. After adjusting to the differences in how the image appears in this tiled medium, I am thrilled with the results . I want to thank my friend Max Wickemyer for creating a quality oak frame with short notice. Anyone in need of custom framing or furniture repair and finishing I recommend you contact Max at 508 763-3432.

This is a first for me, a Mosaic interpretation of one of my recent paintings I am creating with the help of Artaic, Boston. It will be 40" x 40" framed and free hanging when it is done.

Now, I just have to decide which one of my paintings I should mosaic next. Your thoughts are welcome. Take a look at my collection of work and tell me which one you think might make a good mosaic.

We have been so busy lately I forgot to post an announcement about Lakeville Open Studios last Saturday. In any case, it turned out to be a great day and a wonderful success. We had around thirty visitors, half of which stopped in without knowing it was a planned event, but because they saw we were open. With that in mind, we will be opening Studio 59 a lot more often this summer. Keenan and I met a lot of new art fans and we both sold several paintings each. We are happy because each piece is going to a good home.

In other news, I have been working with Paul Reiss at Artaic to create some mosaics of a few of my paintings. The first piece to be translated this way is "Defining Space," owned by Robynn Gaspar of Larkspur, CA.

The new book written by my friend Jean Peirre Chauffour, "The Power of Freedom" was finally published last week and arrived in the mail today. Jean Peirre works for the World Bank in DC. He writes about the need and benefits of freedom and democracy in developing countries. I am thrilled he chose my painting, entitled "Across the Water" for the cover. That same painting is now on display and for sale at L'Attitude Gallery in Boston. www.lattitudegallery.com

The book is for sale at the CATO site: http://www.catostore.org/index.asp?fa=ProductDetails&method=&pid=1441423 . I believe you can also find it on amazon.com

Saturday, November 29, 2008 - My float design for the Mullein Hill Christian Academy took first prize at the 49th Annual Middleboro Holiday Parade, for best capturing this year's theme: "The Spirit of Christmas." The school received prize money and a handsome trophy.