Jack Coughlin, printmaker, illustrator, sculptor, and educator, was born on 19 February 1932 in Greenwich, Connecticut and grew up on south coast of Massachusetts. He studied printmaking and illustration at the Art Students League in New York between 1951 and 1952 and the Rhode Island School of Design, earning his BFA degree in 1954 and his MFA degree in 1961. Coughlin taught printmaking and drawing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for over thirty-five years and is currently professor emeritus of art.

In 1966, Coughlin’s prints were selected for the Associated American Artists’ New Talent in Printmaking exhibition. Coughlin is a member of and exhibited with the Society of American Graphic Artists, the Boston Printmakers, and the Silvermine Guild of Artists. He was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1972 and was elevated to full Academician in 1980. Besides working in etching and woodcut, Coughlin’s illustrations have been used in numerous books and he  has created low relief bronze sculptures using the lost wax casting technique.

The work of Jack Coughlin is represented in the collections of the University Museums, Iowa state University, Ames; the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; the Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library and Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the La Salle University Art Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; the Syracuse University Art Museum, New York; the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; and the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

In 2022, the retrospective Jack Coughlin: Themes and Variations was featured at the Cape Cod Museum of Art.