David Simon Contemporary Art Gallery Bath

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.

On the Beach IV
oil on canvas on board

18 x 20cm

Tremor
oil on canvas on board

20 x 30cm

On the Beach III
oil on canvas on board

18 x 20cm

Aubergine
oil on canvas on board

38 x 50cm

Artichoke
oil on canvas on board

38 x 50cm

Courgette
oil on canvas on board

38 x 50cm

Solstice
oil on canvas

60 x 60cm

Dash Blu
oil on canvas

60 x 60cm

Shift
oil on canvas

60 x 60cm

Chamomile
oil on canvas

55 x 75cm

Celery
oil on canvas

29 x 55cm

Borlotti
oil on canvas

29 x 55cm

Hyssop
oil on canvas

29 x 55cm

Radicchio
oil on canvas

58 x 75cm

Charcoal Bowl and Green Figs
oil on canvas

55 x 70cm

Figs and Bowl
oil on canvas on board

38 x 50cm

Bow
oil on canvas on board

20 x 22cm

Kellet
oil on canvas on board 18 x 20cm

Mizzle Grey
oil on canvas on board

19 x 20cm

On the Beach I
oil on canvas

80 x 100cm

On the Beach II
oil on canvas

80 x 100cm

Fragment
oil on canvas

24 x 30cm

Anchored
oil on canvas

60 x 60cm

In Harbour
oil on canvas

23 x 30cm

Lentil
oil on canvas on board

20 x 23cm

Broccoli
oil on canvas on board

23 x 30cm

Shallot
oil on canvas on board

23 x 30cm

Chestnut
oil on canvas

29 x 55cm

Heave
oil on canvas

32 x 32cm

Pink in the Rough
oil on canvas

60 x 70cm

Stitched
oil on canvas

80 x 80cm

Broach
oil on canvas on board

20 x 22cm

Chain
oil on canvas on board

20 x 22cm

Stern
oil on canvas on board

20 x 22cm

Julia Cooper lives and works in Cornwall with a studio which overlooking Fowey harbour.

Julia’s particular interest lies in painting, creating form and space using a variety of palettes but invariably prefers what she calls knocked back faded colour. The subjects in her still life paintings jostle amongst themselves in various bucolic arrangements of flattened perspective and simplistic narrative.

Living by the ocean also inspires abstract form in paintings reminiscent of harbour structures and coastline, again with the emphasis on softening the palette. Julia uses oil on canvas and mixed media but has also built minimalist constructions with cast off timber pieces from classic boats for example 1930s 6 metre racing yachts.

Julia achieved two Diplomas in both Fine Art and Interior Design and worked with The Cornwall National Trust as designer on the Trusts Holiday Cottage refurbishment team. She is married with two grown up children and having travelled across the world as an army wife is now settled in Fowey where she paints full time.