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Adam COPE was born in England in 1964 & spent many happy, childhood summers in the South West of France. Later on, he married a lady from the Dordogne & became resident in 1998.
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His paintings are a love song to the South West. They express the spirit of the place, 'le terroir'. That which is particular to the locality. The unique & distinctive. There is however a sprinkling of paradise to his paintings, pastoral idylls where the soul dreams. His landscapes depict both a recognizable place as well as an object of poetic intensity.
His colours are intense yet sensitive. Colourist, in the Fauve tradition of painters of 'The Warm South'. Luminous, his colours are smelted & worked upon until they recreate a sense of light & atmosphere. A luminous rejoicing of light. Imaginative colour, which becomes expressive to the spirit, where colour sings. |
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He paints in both oils & watercolour. He is passionate about drawing, where the visual world is explored with curiosity & constant observation.
"I'm engaged in a lifetime of research to find a pictorial language, a personal style that can communicate my vision simply & truthfully. An authentic way of painting that can express clearly & directly my vision of my own personal world. The more I work, the more I discover."
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He often paints outside in the Plein-Air tradition, 'sur le vif', in front of the subject matter. The close observation outside on location gives a sense of atmosphere and a unity of light & colour.
" For me, painting is about a way of seeing. Being outside, under the open skies, painting directly from the subject... is an exploration of my response to the landscape. A kind of meditation. Nature teaches me to see the subject... in a deeper way. The more you look, the more you see. I particularly like the unspoilt little corners of 'deep nature'... wild wood, tangle wood... It makes me sad that they are increasingly threatened by ecological aggression."
Rooted in the English Romantic landscape tradition, influenced by Turner & Claude Lorrain, he studied under studied under Norman Adams, Keeper of the Royal Academy, considered to be the last great English Neo-Romantic painter. His landscapes depict both a recognizable place as well as an object of poetic intensity.
" I want to express the poetic aspect of the landscape. I'm not interested in pure 'realistic' representation or in painting every single pedantic detail. I want to evoke what it felt like as much as what it looked like."
Adam is also an inspirational & qualified teacher of painting, who runs painting holidays & writes articles. |
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