Mistletoe
Posted on March 18, 2010
Gnarled Old Vine Stocks
Posted on March 16, 2010
50 x 31 cm
watercolour
© adam cope
‘Vignoble dans le Quercy Blanc’
2007
30 x 40 cm
Oil on Panel
© adam cope
sold
‘Have a Nice Day’
Posted on March 15, 2010
A5 sketchbook
graphite
©adam cope
‘Have a Nice Day’
Some pages from my A5 sketchpads. Drawn from life, when the music stops, the drawing stops. Click on the images & the let the music begin.
Bed Time Story 12 & 13
Posted on March 12, 2010
Exhibition – St.Emilion, The Little Gallery
Posted on March 11, 2010
Magazine Article & The End of Winter!
Posted on March 3, 2010
Souvent les gens jugent un tableau à première vue, mais come le vin, l’œuvre si elle est réussie doit permettre d’aller chercher un second goût. La phase de conception est très important car ce sont ces arrières saveurs, ces seconds arômes qu’il va falloir faire remonter – Adam Cope, Magazine ‘Terre de Vins’ Jan/Fev2009 – lire l’article
Other news is that the wild geese have been migrating back to SW France during the last week. Flying overhead, often around evening time, their wings cutting throught the air,making a slicing whooshing sound, that makes the heart leap with joy! This is a sure sign of the end of winter. YIPEE!
If you know SW France , then you’ll love the photo-blog of my friend Boguy : IMAGES EN PERIGORD
Painting of ‘The True Vine’
Posted on February 28, 2010
Medium Size Oil on Canvas
61 x 46 cm (approx 24 x 18 inches).
© adam cope
DETAIL
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and
every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring
forth more fruit.
Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto
you.
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of
itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide
in me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and
I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can
do nothing.
If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is
withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they
are burned.”
John 15.1-6
WIP – Pechers de Vignes, Finished State
Posted on February 24, 2010
Medium Size Oil on Canvas
15 F
2009
©adam cope
Here’s the partner of the diptych. Nice & ‘smokey’, soft glowing mid-tones in an overcast autumnal day.
Medium Size Oil on Canvas
15 F
2009
©adam cope
Here’s the diptych together.
POSTSCRPIT 2013 : the plum orchard behind the peach trees was cut down & grubbedout. There are few pruneaux d’agen which remain…. these paitings are already ‘history’ from another time.
Chromatic Black in the Colourist Palette
Posted on February 22, 2010
‘Mistletoe’
medium size oil on canvas
15 F
©adam cope
Chromatic Black in the Colourist Palette
To make chromatic black, the mix is basically the same as the transparent watercolour mix of a bluey green PG 7 pthalo viridian & a bluey red magenta. This gives a very blue black. I like it in watercolours but when mixing down with white in oils, I find it way too blue, so I add some opaque Indian Red to pull it back over to a broken neutral, more grey than blue.
These last five years I’ve been using dioziane violet (normally … but often with some burnt umber) as black. Looks like black but is ‘cleaner’ in mixing on palette than the soot & bones. But.. it’s very slow drying & is complicated to work with in colour mixes. Especially with the warm colours. So I’ve tended to isolate it & not allow it to mix with the other colours. Which thus isolate my black values… making them too black? Too moch like ‘black holes’ or black cut outs. This is exaggerated by photography’s very poor performance in registering colour in very dark values. Result : not enough fluid run down through the upper mid-tones?
In the above painting, I’m using more yellow ochre than cadium yellow pale, thus softening & muting even more the mid tones.
Same old connundrum of bringing Values into harmony with Colours, especially for my preference for a colourist palette of heightened bright colours.
Anyway, the mistletoe makes fun circles doesn’t it ? 🙂
Forever Smiling Buddha
Posted on February 17, 2010
graphite & ink
A5 sketchbook
(…) dharma art refers to art that springs from a certain state of mind on the part of the artist that could be called the meditative state. It is an attitude of directness and unselfconsciousness in one’s creative work. -Tibetan meditation master, the XIth Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
(New Kingdom Statue in the British Museum, circa 1400BC).
graphite
32 x 25cm.
© Adam Cope 2001
Exerpt from my unfinished project ‘Carnet de Voyage en Egypte’, © Adam Cope, 2001 – ongong :
“But now, after my recent travels in Egypt, these fragments in the museum seemed displaced and uprooted, somehow diminished and made smaller.
…the sands of time….One element however manages to cross the sands of time and remain intact, despite the ravages of plunder & the displacement of uprooted museum collections. It is the Egyptian smile in the face of eternity.
::
The expression on the face of this sculpture is the work of a great artist, full of mystery and interior life, fuller than those pert, self-assured later Ramassidian smiles. The restorers have done a wonderful job in piecing together these fragments, which are said to have been found in the mortuary temple of Amenophis III (circa 1400BC).
She is MUT, Goddess, adored of Thebes, Feminine Divine, consort of Amun-Ra, mother of Khons the Moon-child, World Mother, Anima Mundi.
In some ways the act of drawing is akin to the act of worship. To draw is to love, and in loving we carry our breathe of life and enter, fuse with the adored. They say that the Gods need us so as not to be forgotten, and it is with semen of worship that the grain of the Divine is brought to life. Almost as if the sculpted stone itself, the inert granite becomes flesh. Picasso said ” un tableau ne vit que par celui qui le regard”( “a painting only lives in the eye of the beholder”). The museum shut its doors but I could not leave… Casting one last look back, it seemed to me that the Goddess Mut was shimmering, forever smiling.”