Jessica Cooper RWA

an open book

october 6th - 20th 2012

‘an open book - plain to see’

by Dr Ryya Bread

“Our house was full of her notebooks, drawings and paintings and over the years I have watched her journey from kitchen pin-board to gallery wall.” Carol Cooper, Mother of the Artist 2010

The Latin word diurnus, meaning ‘of the day’, is the root to both the word ‘journal’ and ‘journey’. It is in the relationship betweenthese three terms – ‘day’, ‘journal’ and ‘journey’ that an open book is read here. With a title like this you expect a certaintransparency to the exhibition it is headlining. Yet transparency, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and often to see one’sway ‘through’, certain questions, like crumbs on a path, help navigate the terrain.

First there is the question: to what book might this title speak of ?The title, an open book, makes direct reference to a single journal that forms the basis for this collection of new paintings byJessica Cooper. The journal spans the period between early March and June 2012 and contains constant drawings that are thebedrock of Cooper’s artistic practice. Specifically, this book features a series of drawings of the sights gleaned from thepassenger car window on a trip to Warwickshire. This is followed by more made while staying as a guest in a house at the otherend of that car ride. The remainder of the pages of the journal are filled with further drawings upon the return home to theartist’s native county and permanent residence, Cornwall.

‘Transparency’, taken at face value, implies something that is plain to see, and this ‘open book’ is offeredup in true keeping with this notion – on show at Edgar Modern alongside the paintings that it has spawned.This is more than mere display - as the book is available to pick up, to handle and peruse, offering anintimate opportunity to see the progression, indeed a journey, of images and ideas from initial marks madeoften in fleeting moments to the more developed paintings that finally leave the studio and hang on thegallery walls.

Thus the second question: how to read an open book?All the obvious information about Cooper’s career, style and approach has been reiterated and repeated in everinteresting and seemingly exhaustive ways: previous commentators have touched on her strong family life rooted inCornwall; her reoccurring thematic references to everyday objects and ordinary life; her combined techniquesderived of memory and observation; the significance of titles in her work and her simplicity of style, usually equatedwith a minimal aesthetic. In discussing the work of such an artist, with a very limited and repeated range of subjectmatter who aspires to a minimum of mark making – what, I pondered, was left to say that has not already beencovered well?

What is interesting about this question is that the same could be asked of the artist: after a lifetime of painting bowlsof fruit, vases of flowers, houses, chairs and a small variation of other objects, what is left for Cooper to paint thatshe has not already painted well? Why keep returning to the same images? When discussing the motivations behindher own work, the refrain heard most loud and clear from Cooper herself is “because I love to paint” – the title of herEdgar Modern exhibition in 2010. The simplicity of this sentiment echoing the minimalism applauded in her visualstyle. This attribute is described by Wild as a “journey of editing and uncluttering” to achieve the “economical line oftrue draughtsmanship” (2006).

Cooper deploys exercises of restriction, austerity measures if you like; in the same way the poetic form of atraditional Japanese haiku enjoys a restriction of syllables per line and lines per poem to distil the meaning. Thus wesee this as a fundamental technique in her approach to painting: the sights during a car journey from A to B, the‘foreign’ objects of a friend’s kitchen while staying over, a favourite cup from her own cupboard painted every day, asingle journal as the basis for a new body of work…these are just a few examples of this in her practice that set thestage for the real drama…her passion for painting.

Thus we arrive at a third question: What possible journeys are contained within an open book?There are different kinds of journeys to consider. I have already noted above the most literal one, the return trip toWarwickshire. ‘Journey’ also describes a process that moves from a starting point through a progression to anotherplace or position – such as Cooper’s career as her mother described it in the opening quote, or Wild’s description ofher journey through the painting process to arrive at her desired aesthetic above

There is a journey that takes place in taking a drawing from the journal as the basis for apainting. As Cooper describes it an aspect of a drawing sets the painting in motion and then thepainting takes on a life of its own with its own formal demands and challenges to work through.The drawing in the book and the painting are not the same thing, even if inspired by the sameemotive source or compositional elements. The relationship between drawing and painting iscrucial to Cooper’s practice.

In addition to the connection between the drawings in the journal and the paintings on the wall, within the paintings themselvesthere is a dialogue between these elements that I would argue provides the narrative to what might otherwise be mistaken forinanimate objects. It is this painterly device that I believe strikes the chord of ‘pathos’ in Cooper’s paintings.

Cooper uses minimal applications of fields of colour within an otherwise graphic use of line. But this is now painting, not drawing,as determined by the utensil for mark making and the surface it is applied to. This has the effect of fleshing out individualelements in the composition – giving them the spotlight in some theatrical drama we are invited to witness without having theback-story. The flower still life motif in particular seems to tell little vignettes in this way. Although the compositions often appearvery similar, the dramas are individual and vary with each piece. This is how Cooper can return to the seemingly same motif overand over, day after day, and yield new material every time.

For example, what love is made of is a rectangular canvas depicting three flowers protruding from the circular rimof the vase against a white background. Only one of the flowers is imbued with colour – as if to say ‘this is the starof the show’, the protagonist of the story – the others literally ‘wall flowers’. In pink campion however we have thefull bloom in the foreground of the floral arrangement and yet it is the drooping outline of a flower on the right-handside of the vase that holds the resonance of the image, as if we all can appreciate the feeling of fading intoobscurity as the line fades into the background of the composition. The painting process and the preciseapplication of paint are not simply an enhancement to the drawing for Cooper - but an opportunity to reveal muchmore complex interrelationships at play within the visual field.

And so to one last question – what does an open book reveal?In talking with Cooper there seems to emerge a certain ‘corollary of colour’: the more colour dominates a canvasthe more exploratory the investigation – while at the same time, the more ‘empty’ space that surrounds a singleline or gesture the more confident, resolved, and resolute is the statement. These boldly painted pieces such asOrla Kiely purse on the table speak to fields of colour, landscapes that Cooper travels through in her journeytowards a single line that will say what she means to convey to arrive at her intended destination in this case onecould argue with up to the last minute. And yet it is the journey, as much as the destination offers up lessons ofliving and in Cooper’s case, painting.

The Warwickshire journey offers one final point here, the importance of both setting out and returning home, backto the familiar. This is a sentiment captured in a piece included in the show return from London. ‘Setting out’serves as an analogy to ‘beginnings’ and although this painting precedes the journal and the idea to base theshow on a series of paintings derived from its pages, nonetheless, for Cooper it marks the beginning of thejourney for this body of work. It also serves as a reminder that all rules are made to occasionally be broken...

For Cooper, returning home in this new body of work is equated with a return to ‘colour’– not literally, since colourhas never truly left her work, but in her acceptance of it. In an interview with Cooper in her studio she described howprominent colour had been in her painting up until fifteen years ago and how since then she has challenged herselfto say what needed to be said without hiding behind its distracting effect.

Now with this new work the colour is allowed to come to the foreground of her palate again – it has something to sayin its own right. In pomegranate grey the fruit bowl becomes a structure to enable each piece of fruit to be anexperiment with colour. Cooper goes on to articulate what the last fifteen years has taught her, that “if the fruit waswhite the response would be very different”. She now has a confidence to control the readings and regulate theresponses she wants to illicit in her use of colour. Of all my doubts to rest – Cooper proclaims a “joy” in using colour,and describes how the bare white canvas is painted over with white paint to “push the colour out” rather than cover itover.

The structures that Cooper puts in place allow her to practice painting and drawing without having to ask the reasonswhy. Within the confines of her self-imposed restrictions for any given piece she has a purposeful objective laid outlike a path to lead the way. Cooper’s paintings do not pose questions but are each day’s answer to them: statingobservations, making possible propositions and resolving the unrelenting riddles inherent in formal conventions ofpainting. She gets enough information back from her approach to keep moving forward down her chosen path.Tomorrow’s riddles and tomorrow’s resolutions may look strikingly similar to todays or even yesterdays, but thatdoes not mean that the terrain remains the same from one moment to the next.

In this specific body of work, and in her practice generally, even the self-imposed restrictions cannot limit the optionsand Cooper herself must navigate through the plethora of possibilities contained even within the single journal.Rather than feeling that she is beating a dead horse by returning to familiar territory, Cooper’s austere attitude yieldsabundance. She exclaims that she has so much more to say, so many things left untouched, whole tangents tofollow up another time- in short a lifetime of painting ahead of her that wild horses could not keep away. Ultimately,painting is the activity Cooper wants to do on a daily basis –she makes choices to structure her practice so that shecan make that part of her everyday life because she simply “loves to paint” and that, above all else, is plain to see inan open book.

ReferencesCooper, C. (2010) “foreword”. In because I love to paint, Edgar Modern, Bath: ‘jc’Cooper, J. (2012) an open book [recorded interview by Dr. Ryya Bread] St. Just, Cornwall, 20 August 2012Wild, C. (2006) “introduction”. In jessica cooper at The Stour Gallery, Warwickshire: The Stour GalleryPhotographs by author

all my doubts put to rest 12” x 14” acrylic on canvas 2012

good luck 30” x 32” acrylic on canvas 2012

a different place 22” x 22” acrylic on canvas 2012

i found you again 16” x 18” acrylic on canvas 2012

the rose red rooves 12” x 14” acrylic on canvas 2012

orla kiely purse on the table 15” x 30” acrylic on canvas 2012

march pears 15” x 30” acrylic on canvas 2012

study for ‘ what love is made of ’ 16” x 18” acrylic on canvas 2012

very french houses 12” x 12” acrylic on canvas 2012

green pears and avocados 15” x 30” acrylic on canvas 2012

bone handled knives 40” x 40” acrylic on canvas 2012

back from london 16” x 18” acrylic on canvas 2012

my soup your soup 12” x 12” acrylic on canvas 2012

pink campion 30” x 28” acrylic on canvas 2012

carnations and cotton reel 22” x 22” acrylic on canvas 2012

le petit noir 30” x 28” acrylic and pen on canvas 2012

what love is made of 35” x 51” acrylic on canvas 2012

a little more of the same please 12” x 14” acrylic on canvas 2012

up to the last minute 22” x 22” acrylic on canvas 2012

the warwickshire partridge 16” x 18” acrylic and pencil on canvas 2012

old look out 16” x 18” acrylic on canvas 2012

the right time and the right place 40” x 40” acrylic and pencil on canvas 2012

a bowl of apricots with blush pears 22” x 22” acrylic on canvas 2012

in between here and there 16” x 18” acrylic and pencil on canvas 2012

little group with tate cup II 15” x 30” acrylic on canvas 2012

at mum’s house 15” x 30” acrylic on canvas 2012

chrysanthemum 22” x 22” acrylic on canvas 2012

pomegranate grey 22” x 22” acrylic on canvas 2012

zig zag plate 30” x 32” acrylic on canvas 2012

Edgar Modern

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