Photo by Eric Ruby.
Cooper also plays banjo.
Artist Statement
I make medium to large scale figurative artworks using oil paint on canvas. I depict my figures using awkward and pressured linework, with impasto and gestural volumes of paint. The color and physical features of my figures are exaggerated and imaginative to reflect aspects of the figure’s character and surroundings.
Drawing is a fundamental part of my painting practice, my paintings begin as drawings and are supported by beginning sketches. In my practice I am always learning and unlearning how to draw the human figure. If a drawing of one of my figures is too technically rendered, the painting will lose a lot of the character and awkwardness I strive for. As I become more technically proficient, I have to work to maintain the freedom my work had when I first began painting.
When I first began painting I made a series of drawings and paintings based on blood sports like boxing, MMA, and injured soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. I always positioned the figures in a gentle and non-violent embrace, examining the closeness of men during moments of extreme violence. Since my work has broadened to American masculinity and loneliness. I am fascinated by what leads white American men to feel disenfranchised and underrepresented. I am working on a larger series of what I consider to be lost and angry men. In some ways I sympathize and identify with these men. I paint the cultural struggle of white men to maintain power and the endless contradictions in their identities.
Drawing is a fundamental part of my painting practice, my paintings begin as drawings and are supported by beginning sketches. In my practice I am always learning and unlearning how to draw the human figure. If a drawing of one of my figures is too technically rendered, the painting will lose a lot of the character and awkwardness I strive for. As I become more technically proficient, I have to work to maintain the freedom my work had when I first began painting.
When I first began painting I made a series of drawings and paintings based on blood sports like boxing, MMA, and injured soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. I always positioned the figures in a gentle and non-violent embrace, examining the closeness of men during moments of extreme violence. Since my work has broadened to American masculinity and loneliness. I am fascinated by what leads white American men to feel disenfranchised and underrepresented. I am working on a larger series of what I consider to be lost and angry men. In some ways I sympathize and identify with these men. I paint the cultural struggle of white men to maintain power and the endless contradictions in their identities.