Paintings by

JULIE COOPER

In 1979 Julie Cooper studied with stained glass artist Judy Miller in California. She spent the next ten years or so raising a family and making stained glass windows, after which she returned to college for an
art foundation course, followed by a BA in Fine Art at the University of Hertfordshire.

Over the years Julie's paintings have developed with a personal visual
language through an accumulation of layering, scraping back and drawing
into the paint. Colour is important, evoking an emotional response to subject or mood. When she left her studio at Parndon Mill in 2000, the paintings began to be influenced by the landscape around where she now
lives and works in rural Hertfordshire. Primarily estate land, it has been farmed and managed over the centuries and evidence of this is the spur for the paintings in this exhibition as was a series of aerial photographs of Patmore Heath taken in the 1950's or 60's.
Compositionally, a number of the paintings reflect this subject with formal features as seen from above whilst others describe a more intimate experience with the place, felt on daily walks along the ancient paths and bridleways.