We’ve had a great response to our recent video of artist Lance Green and people have asked that we profile additional artists. So we’ve decided to begin a series of written interviews.
First up is Jeff Cochran, an artist who is also an organic farmer, former tatoo artist, filmmaker and dinner guest of Jane Goodall (among many other things). Here are some selected questions from an interview with Jeff, that was conducted by and reprinted here with permission from Leslie Barton:
Q. Where did you grow up?
A. I grew up in a small town in Indiana and I won a scholarship to go to college for art and I earned a bachelors degree in Fine Art, Commercial Art, and Art History.
Q. What was your first professional art experience?
A. When I was in college I got a job as an illustrator for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette and that was alright but it was a little too structured for me. Then, I got a chance to give a guy a tattoo and I figured out rather quickly that it was not my “thing”. I’m just not that “tough”. But the money was great and I did tattoos for a little while but then I started selling painting and I liked that a lot. Painting is the best. I love it. I feel very lucky that I found something that I love to do at such an early age.
Q. How old were you when you sold your first painting?
A. I would guess twenty or twenty one or so.
Q. When did you start making a living off of your art work?
A. Well, I always had jobs that were art-related but my last job “punching a time-clock” was teaching art at a community college and it was really weird because two-thirds of the students were older than me and I was about twenty-six.
Q. Where do you live and what is your studio like?
A. I am very lucky, the art business has been good to me. I am fortunate enough to have a beautiful house and studio in Taos, New Mexico that I spend the summer at and then I have a funky little tin-roof cabin in Costa Rica that is fairly close to the ocean and I spend the winter there.
Q. What is your studio like?
A. My main studio is in Taos and it is a cool little cabin-like structure that I built myself and it is built entirely out of old, recycled wood that I salvaged from old homes that were being torn down. So, it looks like it is a hundred years old but it is quite new. The roof is fogged glass so it has a real soft natural light. I love it. I think they call it “rustic charm”.
Q. People in the art world mostly connect you with your large paintings of chimpanzees. Why Chimpanzees?
A. I started painting them in college and right away I could see that
people liked them and connected with them and I enjoyed painting them and it is a self-portrait of some sort. It’s a fun mental game too because it’s like the chimps are human without being human and I think that makes it easier for the viewer to put him or herself in the painting when it is a chimp than if it were a portrait of just some non-descript human.
Q. Because of the chimps you got to have dinner with Jane Goodall too.
A. Yeah! That was awesome. I was told that the Jane Goodall Institute has a fund raiser every year where they auction off all sorts of stuff so I sent them a big four foot chimp painting - uninvited! The next thing I know I get a phone call from Jane’s personal assistant and she said that Jane loved the painting and wanted to know if I would mind if they did not sell it because Jane Goodall wanted to hang it in her office! I told her that was fine with me and I sent them a second painting to auction and then a month or so later I got invited to have dinner with Jane at her seventieth birthday party. It was great! The best vegetarian food ever!
Q. You are also doing rather well with landscape paintings.
A. Yes, I have always painted landscapes and I paint horses
too. I’ve painted a little bit of everything. I just like to paint. It’s
the most fun thing for me to do.
Q. I understand that you also enjoy farming.
A. Yeah, I’ve graduated from gardener to farmer this past year. I am a nature-lover, tree-hugger, organic… whatever you want to call it. I have an acre of land with my house in Taos and I have always had gardens and last year I got a camper trailer and a yurt, which is kinda like a big tent, and I let young people who wanted to learn vegetable gardening live in them in trade for work on “the farm”. And then we sold vegetables at the farmers market and it was a great time. People told me I was crazy to invite strangers to live in my yard but, it worked out really well and it was a lot of fun. Some of the neighbors thought I was starting a cult with all the young hippies but, I assured them we were just growing lettuce and carrots and tomatoes and all sorts of good stuff. We learned a lot last year and I am looking forward to doing it again next year.
Q. What did you learn?
A. Well, I learned that farming is an art and that what I was really doing is a giant land sculpture. The different colors of plants and soil and mulch contrasted with furrows and beds is like three dimensional painting! I’m a real perfectionist too so all my rows are very straight and clean and I have a great view of Taos Mountain too so all of it combined is a gorgeous picture. I also learned that it is a lot easier to eat a vegetarian diet when you have 800 pounds of tomatoes and 600 pounds of garlic and a hundred pounds of spinach and on and on and on.
Q. My final question is not related to art. What is your favorite thing to have for breakfast?
A. Well, I have thirty-some chickens so I would have to say - eggs!
To see examples of Jeff’s most recent work click here.
