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October Issue 2005
Ella Walton Richardson Fine Art Gallery
in Charleston, SC, Features Works by John Burton and C.M.Cooper
The Ella Walton Richardson Fine Art
Gallery in Charleston, SC, will present the exhibit, Figurative
Moments, featuring works by John Burton and C.M.Cooper. The
exhibition will be on view from Oct. 7 - 29, 2005.
John Burton, a native of Arizona, continues to push his artistry and technical boundaries through work at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Even amidst his painterly accomplishments in western landscape, as a member of the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters, Burton feels a resounding calling to enliven his canvases with cultures beyond American borders. In fact, pieces communicating his most arresting narratives are often inspired from his travels in Chile, East Asia, Scandinavia, and former Soviet bloc countries. After receiving significant recognition from the Oil Painters of America in their last two national exhibitions, and being recognized by the leading arts publication Southwest Art as a 2004 Artist to Watch, Burton is poised to make a valuable contribution to contemporary figurative oil painting.
C.M. Cooper, who describes her painting as "contemporary traditionalism," has shown fascination and reverence for the human figure since her early professional concentration in fashion illustration. Through the opportunity of an extended time period of living in Paris, her artistic focus gained eye-opening scope. This crucial time of artistic exploration catapulted her career into the arena of oil painting on canvas. Cooper's time in Europe attuned her artistic acumen to incorporating a conscious sense of her own unique blend of beauty and grace to her visual creations.
Having the opportunity to gauge one's own senses to a C.M. Cooper painting offers to both the appreciator and the collector Cooper's own definition of the momentary and the exquisite. Furthermore, the observer's enjoyment of the piece captures Cooper's own devotion to the transitory: her visual creations offer just one instant of a woman gazing across the territory of her mattress or a young child peacefully embracing her pillow.
Both Burton and Cooper employ artistic techniques which continue to challenge contemporary artistic boundaries yet still maintain the revolutionary foundations of American Impressionism. Interestingly enough, Burton's own desire to capture the exoticism of Tahiti, North Africa, and Eastern Europe find their roots in the forerunners to Modern European Art: artists like Paul Gauguin, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who explored the cultures of Tahiti and Algeria respectively.
C. M. Cooper's self-proclaimed "alla prima" technique, derived from the Italian term "at once", immediately connects her work with the diverse community of historic and living plein-air painters. Although she primarily works in the studio, her method of encapsulating the expressive ìheartî of her artwork in one sitting with the model before her certainly has roots in the founding impressionist methods.
For further information check our SC Commercial Gallery listings, call the gallery at 843/722-3660 or at (www.ellarichardson.com).
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