Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen is a Canadian singer and songwriter and novelist. He is also an artist. In addition to his enormous contribution to music and literature, he is also an accomplished artist. Leonard was born in 1934 in Montreal Quebec. He published his first novel in 1953 and his first novel in 1964.

Leonard Cohen went to McGill University. His literary influences during this time included Yeats, Irving Layton, Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca and Henry Miller. His first published book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), was the first book in the McGill Poetry Series. Cohen's book, The Spice-Box of Earth (in 1961) made him very well known in the poetry community.

After completing an undergraduate degree, Cohen spent a term in McGill's law school and then a year at Columbia University. Cohen wrote poetry and fiction throughout the 1960s. After moving, a Greek island, Cohen published the poetry collection Flowers for Hitler (1964), and the novels The Favourite Game (in 1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966). The Favourite Game is an autobiographical Bildungsroman about a young man who discovers his identity through discovering the art of writing. It was at this point he began to paint.

Cohen's art is in his own words "...like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it."

In 1967, Cohen moved to the United States to pursue his career as a folk music singer-songwriter. During the 1960s, he was a involved in Andy Warhol's "Factory" group of artists. Warhol said that Cohen had spent time listening to music in clubs and that this had influenced his musical style and his art. The song "Suzanne" became a hit for Judy Collins and was for many years his most popular song.

After performing at a few folk festivals, he came to the attention of Columbia Records. Since the 1960’s Cohen has become more and more recognized as a predominant force in the music world. Today, he continues to record and tour. And make art.
Since his early days in Montreal and living in Greece, Leonard has been a practicing fine artist and today he has an impressive body of art work to rival that of his songs and literary works. The subjects are people places and things.

Watercolors, charcoal drawings, oil pastels, doodles on napkins and even images created on computers, Leonard’s work and an artist is as eclectic as the artist himself.

www.leorardcohen.com