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Don Coen: The Migrant Series
February 22 - June 14, 2015
(above: Promotional banner for Don
Coen: The Migrant Series. Image courtesy of El Paso Museum of Art.)
The El Paso Museum of Art is presenting Don Coen: The Migrant Series from February 22 through June 14, 2015.
Around the world the agriculture industry relies on seasonal
laborers to harvest crops. In America, it is estimated that 1.3 million
citizens travel from state to state working on farms, with many more traveling
under work visas or as undocumented laborers from other countries. The work
is difficult, the pay is typically low, and the long-term exposure to pesticides
used on crops is dangerous to the workers' health. Yet the service the migrant
farmers provide is vital to American agriculture and our nation's economy. 
Colorado-based artist Don Coen grew up working on his family's farm and has an appreciation for the hardships farm laborers endure. For more than three decades, he has focused on making realistic paintings and finding interest in rural, everyday life.
Executed with a non-traditional airbrush technique, The Migrant Series features 15 large-scale images created between 2001 and 2010. In 1992, Coen began taking photographs of migrant farmers during his travels around the country, an interest that developed out of his early experience of working on his family farm. He typically interacted directly with the workers he encountered and, wherever possible, received permission to take their photographs. The artist's collection of photographs grew into the thousands before he began his painting series in 2001. (right: Don Coen (American b. 1935) Manuel, 2001-2010 Airbrush acrylic and pencil on canvas, 78 1/2 x 112 1/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist)
The Migrant Series is Coen's attempt to bring attention to America's traveling farm laborers, a rare subject in American art history. "For the average American," states the artist, "migrant workers are an invisible and transparent component of our world."
Coen's emphasis is on the humanity of the individuals portrayed, and the large scale makes them too big to ignore. In this way, Coen hopes to bring attention to a segment of society that is too often overlooked.
Born on November 24th, 1935, in Lamar, Colorado, Don Coen attended Lamar Junior College and then received his BA in Advertising Design from the University of Denver and his MFA in Ceramics and Fine Art from the University of Northern Colorado. Represented by the Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, he has had one-man shows across the American West, Minnesota, and Illinois, and his work is found in public and corporate collections from Idaho to Texas and from Arizona to New York. Information throughout the exhibition draws on the artist's own observations about the people he has encountered while traveling to farms in California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Oregon, and Texas.
Exhibition tour
The El Paso Museum of Art.This is the second museum to exhibit The Migrant Series after its debut in fall of 2014 at the Phoenix Art Museum. Don Coen: The Migrant Series is a traveling exhibition organized by the Phoenix Art Museum.
(above: Don Coen (American b. 1935) Miguel, 2001-2010 Airbrush acrylic and pencil on canvas, 78 1/4 x 112 1/2 inches. Courtesy of the artist)
(above: Photo of gallery during installation of Don Coen: The Migrant Series. Photo courtesy of El Paso Museum of Art.)
Resource Library editor's note:
The website of Don Coen features four videos posted on YouTube in 2009 containing interviews of Don Coen by The Denver Art Museum.
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