George Cochrane was born at 4:44 in Fürt, Germany and raised in Dublin, New Hampshire, his art training began at the Cambridge School of Weston, Massachusetts and continued at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. He worked at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy and spent his junior academic in Florence, studying Italian and Fine Art at Sarah Lawrence College and Art History at the Università di Firenze. He has an M.F.A. from Hunter College, City University of New York.
Long Time Gone, his graphic novel in-progress, has been exhibited at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) in North Adams, the Tweed Museum, Duluth, Minnesota, 153 Studio, Brooklyn, N.Y., and the Shirley Fiterman Art Center, Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, N.Y. Long Time Gone episodes have appeared in “ESOPUS,” “Bomb,” and “the Deli.” His oil paintings, drawings, and manuscript of Dante’s Divine Comedy have been exhibited at The Museo Archeologico Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, Italy; Biblioteca Comunali, Perugia; Castello dei Conti Guidi, Perugia; Fondazione Tito Balestra, Longiano; Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York; Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey; Momenta Art, Brooklyn, N.Y.; New York Public Library's Jefferson Market Branch, New York, N.Y.; Esther Raushenbush Library, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, N.Y.; Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Repetti Gallery, Long Island City, N.Y.; and Martin Kudlek, Cologne, Germany, among other venues.
Beginning in 2014, Cochrane created a completely illuminated manuscript edition of Dante’s Inferno, published by Thornwillow Press of Newburgh, N.Y. In 2021 for the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death, Facsimile Finder, San Marino, published his complete Commedia in Italian and English language editions as La Divina Commedia-The New Manuscript. Müller & Schindler published the edition as Die Göttliche Komödie-Eine Moderne Bilderhandschrift in German. The artist has lectured widely in the U.S. and Italy on his project. Columbia University invited Cochrane to publish his commentary on the work on their website “Digital Dante” (https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/image/cochrane-illustrations/). Cochrane lives in Brooklyn, New York and is a Professor of Fine Art at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Florham Park, New Jersey.
In 2023 Cochrane and poet David Daniel collaborated to make What Love Is: Book One. Transforming the presentation of Daniel’s new poetry, the artist created “illuminations” that take on a range of visual forms, including the graphic novel. This first volume features a commentary written by the artist and poet on the unique creative process that went into its making, the poems in plain text, and with forward by poet H.L. Hix. Published by Nirala Series, the book launches on July 18 with a series of in-store events from coast to coast.