Art / Studio
Painting Practice
Animals, mostly. Painted with a restricted colour palette — something I’ve come to embrace as a colourblind artist. Each piece is worked over many times, the character discovered through the process rather than imposed from the start.
Current Work
This painting came out of a day where I felt pretty boxed in — a familiar feeling, but especially present at the time. I was looking at work by artists in Ottawa and elsewhere who use strong boundaries and tight compositions, and it pushed me to start treating the edges of the canvas as something active rather than something to avoid. Working with that constraint ended up being freeing. Letting the animal press against the edges gave me something solid to work with and took away the pressure of infinite space. It shifted the process from trying to fill a canvas to responding to it.
About the Artist
Jacob Cogan is an artist and designer from Ottawa, Ontario, who paints animals with a strong sense of character — approaching them like companions he spends time with as each painting takes shape. He often paints over an image many times, allowing the animal’s personality to gradually emerge through the process. Repeated reworking creates a sense of dialogue between the painter and subject, where character is discovered rather than imposed.
He is colourblind, and works with a deliberately restricted colour palette — a constraint that has shaped his practice into something distinct. Rather than working around it, he leans in: the limitation has become one of the most generative parts of how he makes work.
The animals are often interwoven with family imagery and quiet symbolism, creating space for multiple emotions and memories to coexist within a single painting. Amidst the responsibilities of daily life and family care, this practice has become a steady source of joy.
Trained at OCAD University, Toronto. Based in Ottawa, Ontario. Reach out for the full catalog or to catch Jacob at one of his local exhibitions in Ottawa — get in touch.