Jack Coughlin: Themes and Variations

Jack Coughlin: Themes and Variations is a retrospective exhibition at CCMOA that looks closely at over 60 years of Jack Coughlin’s artwork across various mediums. In drawing, printmaking, watercolor and sculpture, Coughlin has returned to several themes that are treated in depth in this show: portraiture, animals, the human figure, and states of metamorphosis and the grotesque. This exhibition draws from works in the Coughlin family’s collection and was curated by his daughter, Maura Coughlin.

Jack Coughlin was born in 1932 in Greenwich Connecticut, studied printmaking and illustration at the Art Students League in New York and the Rhode Island School of Design. Before retiring in 1994, he was Professor of drawing and printmaking for over 30 years in the Fine Arts Department of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Wellfleet has been his seasonal home since the late 1950s, where he and his wife, the painter Joan Hopkins Coughlin, have opened their art gallery, The Golden Cod Gallery to show their artwork every summer.

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