plein-air painting – Le Cingle de Limeuil, Dordogne
Posted on May 23, 2011
‘Le Cingle de Limeuil’
Cingle = meander in the river Dordogne at Limeuil.
‘Le Cingle de Limeuil’
plein air painting

WIP : Le Cingle de Limeuil, Dordogne
Posted on May 17, 2011
‘Le Cingle de Limeuil, Dordogne’
ETAPE …. En Progres …
Oil on Canvas
65 x 54cm (approx 25,5 x 21,5 inches).
© The Artist.
Le cingle = the meander of the dordogne at Limeuil
FINISHED STATE
ETAPE FINALE
HOMAGE À CÉZANNE
Too much like Cézanne? Ahh maitre Cézanne, you who have given me so much? It sometimes seems to me that even the farmers plough their fields as if by your hand,. Your vision has helped shape the vision of many artists, including myself, who followed on behind you. It was by looking at some your many ‘half-finished’ paintings – works in progress – that I partly leant to oil paint.
bright spring yellows – Matisse on shock
Posted on April 12, 2011
12 paysage format francais
© The Artist.
Here’s another painting of the same scene a few weeks earlier, just before the leaves opened, dating from 2007:
‘Berges du Dropt’
Oil on MDF Panel
30 x 40cm (approx 12 x 16 inches).
© The Artist.
“The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.” – Matisse
La Dordogne à Lalinde 2 – L’Eau et les Rêves, Gaston Bachelard.
Posted on March 30, 2011
Medium Size Oil on canvas
x 40cm (approx 30 x 14 inches).
© The Artist
I was born in a country of brooks and rivers, in a corner of Champagne, called le Vallage for the great number of its valleys. The most beautiful of its places for me was the hollow of a valley by the side of fresh water, in the shade of willows…
My pleasure still is to follow the stream, to walk along its banks in the right direction, in the direction of the flowing water, the water that leads life towards the next village…
But our native country is less an expanse of territory than a substance; it’s a rock or a soil or an aridity or a water or a light. It’s the place where our dreams materialize; it’s through that place that our dreams take on their proper form….Dreaming beside the river, I gave my imagination to the water, the green, clear water, the water that makes the meadows green. I can’t sit beside a brook without falling into a deep reverie, without seeing once again my happiness….The stream doesn’t have to be ours; the water doesn’t have to be ours. The anonymous water knows all my secrets. And the same memory issues from every spring.
– L’Eau et les Rêves. Essai sur l’imagination de la matière. Gaston Bachelard.
La Dordogne à Lalinde 1
Posted on March 21, 2011
Medium Size Oil on canvas
65 x 54 cm
© adam cope
‘ Îlots, Pontours 1’
Medium size oil on canvas
46 x 38 cm
© adam cope
‘ Îlots, Pontours 2’
Medium size oil on canvas
70 x 33 cm
© adam cope
Brambles
Posted on February 27, 2011
Oil on MDF panel
41 x 33 cm (approx 12,5 x 17 inches)
© Adam Cope
A session in the studio repainting this plein-air piece. Red & blue, no?
I like brambles a lot for their vigour & pioneering life-force. This was an over-grown patch by an abandoned house, rich & melodious in bird song.
Path at the End of Winter
Posted on February 24, 2011

‘Chemin, Cornus – Fin de Hiver’
Medium Size Oil on Canvas
61 x 45 cm (approx 24 x 18 inches).
© The Artist
cornus = dogwood
Karst Landscape – finished state
Posted on March 29, 2010
large oil painting…
See the work in progress & some commentary in the post : Karst Landscape at the End of Winter (in the category rocks or WIP)
“Karst topography is a landscape shaped by the dissolution of a layer or layers of soluble bedrock, usually carbonate rock such as limestone.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst
- How to draw rocks & cliffs part one
- How to draw rocks & cliffs part two
- How to draw rocks & cliffs part three
- How to draw rocks & cliffs part four
- Cliff in the Vezérè Valley – ‘Sous Le Ruth, No.1’
- Rock Formations – John Ruskin – Prehistoric Shelters in the Dordogne
- Caves in art – Ruskin
Ditypch ‘Mistletoe’ – Parallax in Landscape art
Posted on March 25, 2010
Ditypch
Oil on two canvas
each 64 x 55 cm (approx 21,5 x 25 inches)
© adam cope
“Here, by the riverside, the motifs multiply, the same subject seen from different angle offers a subject for study of the greatest interest, and so varied that iI think I can keep myself busy for months without shifting my position, inclining sometimes more to the right, sometimes more to the left.” – Cézanne, to his son Paul, Aix, sept 8 1906
Here’s a reference photo, at dusk, as I imagine there’s possibly a few of you who might not know what misteltoe looks like (it’s the round clumps in the trees).
Mistletoe is a parasitic shrubs that grows in trees, living of the host-tree’s sap. Mysterious plant I love it & have four clumps in my garden. We used to celebrate New Year with it in my southern english home town of Winchester.
“Mistletoe bears fruit at the time of the Winter Solstice, the birth of the new year, and may have been used in solstitial rites in Druidic Britain as a symbol of immortality. In Celtic mythology and in druid rituals, it was considered a remedy for barrenness in animals and an antidote to poison[11], although the fruits of many mistletoes are actually poisonous if ingested as they contain viscotoxins.” Mistletoe-WIKI
Landscape as the Mirror of the Soul
Posted on March 22, 2010
Part of a diptych
Medium Size Oil on Canvas
65 x 54 cm (approx 21 x 26 inches)
© adam cope
Maybe the artist should stay silent about his images. Leave the interpretation to the onlooker.
The artists’ vision arises at the same time as she finds meaning… there are so many technically perfect paintings of landscapes but they don’t speak to me of the mirror of the soul, nor particularly much about the place, the lanscape either. I feel taht the artist has taken herself to much out of the equation & her visionis diminished.
“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.” – Rumi
“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley
2009
Oil on Panel
30 x 40 cm
© adam cope
Another painting about looking through a (veil) screen of trees to a view of hills the other side :
La Taillus’
2001
43 x 39 cm
Oil on canvas
© adam cope
available