John D. Cogan

John D. Cogan is a Texas-born artist who has made western landscape scenes integral to both his lifestyle and his body of work. He was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, and now lives in Farmington, New Mexico. The countryside that has surrounded him all his life has had a great influence on the scenes he chooses to paint. He is most fond of painting landscapes from areas such as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. His images are done in acrylics on canvas and range from mountain stream scenes to majestic views of Old Faithful to simple sunlit landscapes. Cogan has been painting professionally for over twenty years and in that time he has been featured in a number of publications and involved in several important commissions. In 1999, he was one of fifteen artists invited to raft down the Colorado River for the Grand Canyon Landscape Painters Expedition. The trip was intended to heighten the artists’ awareness of the ever-changing environment in the inner canyon. His works are included in the permanent collections of San Juan College, Citizens Bank, and Burlington Resources, all in Farmington, New Mexico. The artist received his Ph.D. in Physics from Rice University in 1981 and for a short while held a career as an atomic physicist for Shell Oil Company. It was at the urgings of his wife that he began painting full-time and traded in science for art. His background in physics has been an asset to his work, however. His knowledge of physics and geology has aided him in the rendering of light upon geographical surfaces. “Understanding the physical properties of a landscape and how the elements affect it enables me to portray it more realistically,” says Cogan.