Julia Cooper: Fragment
5 - 29 September 2020
Four her fourth solo exhibition with David Simon Contemporary, Julia Cooper has completed a remarkable series of compositions inspired by the south coast of Cornwall. Whilst drawing on common shapes of harbours, headlands and coves, these paintings are abstracted and semi-figurative. Cooper constantly renders down her familiar visual territory, reducing the landscape to the simplest forms. Much of this is done over a lengthy process of building up layers, obscuring earlier work and an energetic mark-making that gives each work a sense freedom and of history.
This body of new work moves from the cool colour palette created earlier this year in the spring, to explorations in plaster-pinks and greys that were developed over the summer months. Flitting between abstract form and physical shapes, the show is interspersed with kitchen still lifes. This exhibition conjures an emotive sense of place and reveals the evolution and diversity of her painting practice.
Chamomile
oil on canvas
55 x 75cm
Chestnut
oil on canvas
29 x 55cm