Cooper Wilson

The artwork across the top of these pages is from a painting exhibited in Cooper Wilson’s most recent show – into the garden of my delight.

The title into the garden of my delight was conceived as a metaphor for the artist’s joy in painting as she celebrated, in this particular series, the impact of her suburban garden on her artistic imagination. The garden was planted eight years ago, just metres from Cooper’s studio space in her suburban home. As it neared its full growth, she was keen to celebrate the myriad of shapes, moods and events that take place in her own personal landscape.

Improvisation is critical to the expressionist method used to evoke landscape in Cooper’s work. Paintings often begin with a reference point – seedpods, sudden storms, fence lines – which are then incorporated into the composition as the artist works with a range of media to capture the energy and spontaneity of her garden setting. Colour creates mood and in dare to be yellow Cooper has mixed bright yellows of the early morning with golden shades of afternoon light to suggest the shifting light across the day.

The reference point for Cooper’s next show – all and the blue persistence – is the sighting of thousands of jellyfish in a gorge at Stradbroke Island, near Brisbane, a number of years ago. “Like ink stains on my mind, the throng of jelly fish has persisted, returning time and time again as a particular pattern or schema in my work”, Cooper says. Work from this series will be exhibited in Brisbane and Sydney in September 2007.

A number of Cooper’s paintings can also be viewed at Brisbane’s Sofitel Hotel in February and March 2007.

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