Sheena Cooper

I trained in Fine Art and Printmaking at the City and Guilds School of Art in London for four years graduating in 1977. I have been working and teaching ever since.

I am drawn to landscapes that strongly reflect a sense of the history and geology of the place, like Dartmoor. I sketch, take photos and sometimes do larger drawings on the spot, then take all the gathered information to the studio where I do a black and white drawing using all the bits I’ve collected with the impressions I have had while being in situ, until the sense, purpose and will of the picture is established. Then I can work in colour, evolving the image in a series of layers, knitting all the elements together, trying to get into it the movements of the land and rocks in its formation, the evolving creatures that have inhabited it, the sprouting of trees and plants, constant cycle of decay and regeneration, the human impact and continuing sense of flux and upheaval that I feel in everything - trees growing, still land moving. To do this I shamelessly use abstraction, anthropomorphism, movement and unresolved suggestions. I tear and layer and use collage. If I'm working on paper I use pastels, paint and collage and ‘found’ things. To get the depth of colour I work with opposites building on each other to give greater resonance then I fix it and work again establishing multiple layers, slowly bringing forward the dominant colour and at the same time pulling in ‘accidents’ and surprises into the work. With oil I do it by working, then drying, then working over.

In all this I am, in my mind, not copying but re-experiencing being there and my purpose is to draw the viewer into the process so they too can have a dialogue with the picture. I see this as not a passive but an active exchange and love it when people find things in my work that I didn’t know were there. I passionately believe that we as a species suffer without an intense engagement with the natural world and this in some sense is what I’m trying to promote in my work.