Misery Island

​​

Misery Island envisions an interior world where memory and possibility converge. The title refers to a real island off the New England coast that Lauren Cohen has been visiting with her father since she was a child, a place where they confronted and began to heal family trauma. Once a haven for a shipwrecked sailor and later the site of a grand casino and resort, the island is now a quiet sanctuary for birds and plant life. Its own cycles of spectacle, ruin, and renewal mirror the themes of personal and collective transformation that run through this body of work.

​

Through paintings and forthcoming ceramic sculptures Cohen builds layered rooms that hold the weight of history while opening space for new narratives to emerge. Each canvas functions like a stage set. She paints in objects from her childhood home, fragments of American history, and symbols of conflict and renewal until the scenes feel alive. Quilted patterns, maritime figures, Civil War echoes, and everyday furnishings become actors and props in a shifting drama that reflects the country’s complex story of violence and reinvention.

 

By interlacing historical references with lived experience, Misery Island becomes both refuge and rehearsal. It is a space where the beautiful and the difficult coexist, where grief can be transformed, and where the next chapter of life and culture is still being created.