Steve Cohen, Billy Joel's longtime lighting director, exhibits his art at LI gallery 

Steve Cohen has been interpreting music through lights for decades as Billy Joel’s longtime lighting director and creative director.

But the budding painter from Springs is now finding new outlets for his inspiration, including “Origin,” a series of large new works on display at The White Room Gallery in Bridgehampton as part of its “All the Pieces” exhibit through June 16.

“Especially with Billy’s stuff, those pieces of music have been written on my brain, they are part of my DNA,” says Cohen, who has worked with Joel for 45 years. “But they now sound fresh . . . because I’m approaching it through a different medium. They're all brand-new to me. And they trigger color. They trigger movement. They trigger emotion.”

The “Origin” pieces were conceived together and completed quickly, finished in eight days. “These three really big pieces have a story between them, which kind of is fun,” says Cohen. “It's like doing an album as opposed to a bunch of singles.”

The main piece, “The Cooling,” sparked the concept. When the painting, five feet tall and more than 11 feet long, was finished, Cohen thought it could have been what Earth looked like when it was cooling after its fiery creation. The other two paintings in the series, both five feet tall and more than seven feet long, reflected Earth’s “Inception” and then the “Explosion of Life” that followed. He made all three by placing the canvases on the floor and putting paint on them and then getting underneath them and moving the canvases around.

“I lift them up with my arms and my back and whatever,” he says. “And I make the paint move based on my interaction with the canvas. They’re full-on action paintings. It’s really a spiritual journey for me. It's my energy, but I use gravity, which is a known metaphysical force, and gravity completes the story for me. It has that connection. I think you need to have a connection with all art.”

Cohen credits Joel with inspiring him to take on larger works. He had just finished a six-foot-by-16-foot painting called “Blue Moves” and wasn’t sure about it. But when Joel saw a picture of it on Cohen’s computer backstage at Madison Square Garden, he was immediately impressed. And “Blue Moves” now hangs in Joel’s Florida home.

“He’s such a great supporter,” says Cohen, who will have the rare honor of being the artistic director of the Wembley Stadium concerts of both Joel and The Eagles later this month. “I love working with him and I love the work. I love the rare opportunity to get to create that moment in time at Madison Square Garden that happens once a month. It's enough fuel to keep me spiritually satisfied for the next 26 days in a month. And then I get the chance to try all these other things. I’m a happy camper.”