Last Friday, on my way to an opening in NoHo, I stopped to visit artist/illustrator and frequent DART contributor Fernanda Cohen on the job. She had mentioned a while back that she was doing a mural project for a downtown restaurant and I wanted to se what was up. When I arrived at the dark entrance, her studio assistant, Manolo M., led me to the back, where I found Fernanda perched on a brightly lighted scaffolding, wielding a long handled paintbrush.

"Wow, this is like the Sistine Chapel," I said. (Yep, I actually said that.) What seemed like acres of brilliantly colored flowers bloomed from floor to ceiling, in long runs from the entrance to the back of the space. Fernanda was now painting the large circular enclosure of a stairwell, whose walls soared high above. She was in the process of adding hundreds of transparent yellow leaves among the green stems and multicolor blossoms, whose abstracted forms and brilliant colors are reminiscent of anemones.

As we hung out, chatting about work and life and interesting things going on in the art world, Fernanda continued to paint, smoothly adding leaf upon leaf to the riot of colorful flowers. We agreed on an email interview covering the live conversation; her answers just came in, below.

Fernanda Cohen at work. Photographs: Diana Eliazov.

How did you show the client what you were planning to do before starting the murals themselves?

They had seen a personal drawing of mine I did a few years ago, "Cat Fight," which shows the field of flowers that originally inspired this project. So I re-drew it and tweaked the color palette to adapt it to the space design.

Once you got the OK to proceed, how did you plan the project - in terms of getting all the elements in place and ready to paint?

I first outlined all the walls freehand, including all the murals plus the staircase - then I got paint samples for the color palette. One I finished the drawing, my assistant Manolo and a few student helpers filled the outline with color, under my direction and supervision.

How much of the work can you turn over to your assistants?

They helped with coloring, not drawing. Manolo, my studio assistant and a painter himself, works full time for me so he was a huge part of the project's progress. I first painted a section that included all the flowers in order to control the distribution of the color palette, and then came up with a system for the distribution of the three shades of green we used. Manolo followed this plan, and he trained my helpers (Miki Ishikawa, Yun Seo Cho, You Jin Jeong, Jess Ruliffson and Jean Kuo, mostly students at SVA). Their job was mainly to do second and third coats of paint so they wouldn't have the pressure of creating new leaves.

What do you listen to while you paint?

No music, please. There is something very soothing, and rather intimate, about painting for hours and hours in silence.

Is it strange to go from mural scale to a page-size drawing now that you've been working on this project for a while?

Working in my studio feels like a nice break these days, since mural work is much more physical and tiring than 2D drawing on a sheet of paper. I don't think it's strange, but a nice combination of grand and petite.

What is your next mural commission?

I'm starting another restaurant project out in Long Island as soon as I'm finished with this one. The concept is completely different though, it's more fashion and figure oriented, and the place is about 10 times as large.

You do so many different kinds of projects - creating and marketing your own products as well. Is there any medium or assignment or product that you particularly enjoy working with?

I do do quite an extensive range of things under one hat: illustration. It includes teaching at SVA, running a lecture series at the Society of Illustrators of NY, being the vice president of ICON6, regularly writing for DART and 90+10 magazine, art directing the international illustration section of Terrorismo Gráfico, my line of Lilah Bags and Lilah Books at the MALBA museum gift shop, designing Gap tees, Third Drawer Down tea towels, La Plume de Louise post-it notes, murals, advertising, editorial and a solo exhibition at Elsi del Rio gallery in Buenos Aires this coming May among a few other things.

I love the combination of hands-on work with the social aspect of the illustration field. I enjoy the way all the areas I work in balance my life and keep it interesting.

The very busy Ms. Cohen will be on hand at Society of Illustrators on April 1^st to introduce Milton Glaser, who is giving a talk for her lecture series there. Please visit her website for more information, and check her Facebook page for updates. And you can check out her articles for DART here.

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