Phoebe Cope: Recent Paintings & Sculpture:

Biggar & Upper Clydesdale Museum, 156 High Street, Biggar ML12 6DH, Scottish Borders

Exhibition dates: 3-30 June, 2022 / Open Tuesday-Sat 10-5pm Sunday 1-5pm, Closed Monday

The exhibition comprises of eight bodies of work from the past decade. The works are pictured above along with some of the preparatory drawings.

The list of these works is also below along with a price guide. For further details contact: 07980575377

Notes on the process of painting, 29th May 2022: The series from this Spring was painted an hour from Biggar in  Dumfries House, Cumnock, East Ayrshire, home to an array of social enterprises under the umbrella of the Prince’s Foundation.  There,  I was interested in the bustling daily activity: the building team off for a quick lunch in a van; the maintenance team in high vis jackets adding wood chip and gravel to the playground beneath the Redwoods after rain. I liked the pockets of wilderness left: I depicted some spindly ash and birch, self seeded, that manage to remain untouched despite deliberate planting all around in the arboretum.The organic vegetable garden seems to follow biodynamic principles with its  circular format centred on a pagoda. There is a newly planted Dye garden on my left, with Woad and Madder. Groups of people came in to learn how to sow potatoes. The high footfall means  the paths don’t need much weeding luckily, given herbicides can’t be used. Comfrey was stewing  in metal vats of water  along the walls awaiting use.

I often return to paintings year after year at the particular moment in the season. Scots pines in Autumn, 2017-2022 grew a couple of metres higher.  Others are made with help of drawings done on the spot, so don’t need to change so much as the slower paintings, as that particular moment  of flux has been  economically captured. My information gathered is eyeballed both from what is directly present in front of me as well as from memory.  A photographic image may remind me I was somewhere at a particular date and enlist a few facts about a given scene. But it stimulates me little enough to draw or paint from. Maybe this preferred taste is equivalent to a frozen mouse being less appetising than a  warm wriggling  one for the hungry cat or snake. Vitalistic drawing  practice  can also be related to the practice of hunting and gathering. The human eye had to be attuned to tracking animals  and noticing and distinguishing the delicate imprints left by prey. The ability to read a landscape and pick up nuances was crucial to survive. So drawing grows out of an innate need to pick up fragments of dark and light, essential data to have in order to reach a decision within a split second. There is a lot of writing currently on the re-wilding of the self, as well as that of the landscape.

Considering this I look at myself and family, with a perspective that tries to be more in tune with primeval understanding. Because painters see the world slowly getting interested in the patterns of life before them, they can be difficult to travel with as straightforward sightseeing always regards big panache events as more interesting and worthy of seeing . Painters can be entertained on little - look at Morandi and his variations of grey vases on grey  or Uglow and his lemons lying like  monuments on plinths. Being around painters, if you don’t paint, may  be like accompanying someone fishing if you don’t fish, or golfing if you don’t golf. I say all this because I have got to know a few painters quite well having only ever lived with them. Yet it can be exciting if you can regard or practice  it as a sort of a sport. The pace of activity is both very slow and super quick. Like you can whack a golf ball miles ahead or you can do hardly perceptible strokes with minute tweaks that seem to go on forever never getting inside the hole. Sometimes  you feel you  are even going backwards if such little progress has happened.

Dumfries House, Spring 2022

Building Team, Redwoods, oil on wood, 30x42cm

Redwoods & Slides, oil on wood, 30x42cm

Maintenance Team & Redwoods, oil on wood, 42x90cm

Kauffman Organic Vegetable Garden, oil on linen, 42x60cm

Large Quartet Landscape, 2021-2022

Old Hawthorn with ripe haws, Kilbucho Manse Burn

65cmx110cm x 4 (260cmx110cm), oil on linen

Local Trees Series, 12 months of the Year 2020-2021, oil on linen, 76x62cm

January Holm Oak Norfolk

February Lichen, holly, vase, children

March Blackthorn, hen run, Norfolk

April, newts, burn, rainbow dress

May, seagull shirt, drawing by burn, badger wood

June, Evening Primrose, Honesty, Sequoia, Platinum grandma

July, Cherry Tree, tin bath tub, Norfolk

August, Chilli, Courgette, Tomato, Quinoa in poly tunnel

September, Birch, seed heads

October, Scots pine, pyre 2017-2021

November, Plum, Kitchen carpentry

December, Sycamore with moss, tree planting

Cardon Hill Views, 2013-2015, oil on linen, 105x110cm,

South East, Woodshed, Sycamore, June

South West, Dovecot, Beech, September

Flower Series, 2014-2018, oil on linen or wood, 60x50cm

Pale Pink James Grieve Apple Blossom against a Wall, 2017-19

Cherry tree, Grandparents, Blackbirds, 2017-18

Dahlias and Shorn Ewe, Paisley, 2014

Norfolk Triptych 2018-2021, oil on linen, 45x60cm

Andrew with Arms spread out and Tessa feedings Hens (in brown)

Andrew with Tessa in Buggy with Cherry (in brown)

Andrew Learning to Ride Bike with Tessa Sweeping with Lime Tree & Vine

Interiors, 2021, oil on linen, 62x76cm

Watching TV with Grandparents, Norfolk

Bathroom & Playroom with Church and Ship

Group Studies, 2021-2022, oil on linen

Biggar Forest School with Elm  and Larch in Autumn, 55x80cm

The Spring Drumelzier Drawing Art workshop, 105x110cm

Preparatory Drawings on Paper Series, 2020, 70x50cm

Attic Play

Bath time

Nature Table

Kitchen Carpentry

Burn with Newts

Burn with Badger Wood

Tessa and Jug with Sycamore 60x50cm

Andrew and Tessa, in ink and conté, 60x50cm, 2018

Large Paintings, oil on linen

Tapestry Design, East Anglia, Autumn, 95x150cm, 2019

The Black Hill, Potentilla, 110x150cm, 2012-2014

Small Paintings, 2021-22, oil on board, 30x42cm

Autumn Beech Hedge

Autumn Ash and Plum in Yellow

Autumn Studio with Pink Roof

Tiny Painting, 2021-22, oil on board, 20x30cm.

Bonfires and Clearance

Sculpture

Noah & Dove, I carved it in Berwickshire pink sandstone locally at the Stone Studio of Susheila Jamieson and James Gordon,  2022

Bronze sculpture of Family Group is quarter life size. First I modelled in clay. Once finished it was cast into wax and then poured by the team at Powder Hall Bronze Foundry, Leith, 2019-2021

Painting Prices:

20x30 £400

30x42 £700

45x60 £1250

50x60 £2000

42x90 £1750

62x76 £2500

55x80 £2250

110x105 £4000

110x260 £9000

Drawing commission prices: 70x50cm £1500

Sculpture: family group quarter life size clay modelling: £2500

Press Release: March 2022

Phoebe Cope’s paintings and sculpture respond to thoughts and ideas that hold meaning in the artist’s world and explore important questions in today’s largely virtual existence. With a sense of defiance and rebellion against the world of hashtags and digital footprints, the work in the exhibition rejoices in its materiality; in the medium itself and its redness, blueness and yellowness. These paintings are evidence of a self-centred simple-mindedness, ignorant of the outcomes of the reconfiguration of the world’s divisions. They bear witness to stillness, to the joy and gratitude of being alive, to the fortune at being able to hear the gurgling burn, smell the pine’s cones and its wood’s smoke, and hear the calls to a dinner. They are filled with the vitality and brilliant colours of the ever-changing seasons and cycles of nature, with an emphasis on the individuality of trees and the important role they play within our ecology.

These paintings were made with a desire to continue wandering even in the domestic environs, to discern the fine line between the vision of a tourist who complains versus the vision of a pilgrim who celebrates, and strives for the good life of ‘growing your own’. With a sense of flux, and light self-satire, these are captured in earnest. They seek to demonstrate, educate and function as a slow form of entertainment. They were therefore made for children, in a practice of drawing as play and play as drawing, to learn as a grown adult from one’s offspring what has been lost in this last generation.

Cope believes that being a painter now, more than ever before, has never been so poignant. She questions how to revitalise and inspire the human race to re-engage and sensitise themselves to the nuances of the vital world around them; to gain epiphanies from epiphytes, to distinguish between watching a documentary on Netflix and actively observing and drawing, with an attentive eye and charcoal stick in hand.

These recent paintings and drawings are testimony to her belief in the tangible, a return to thoughtful silence and patience, and the active participation in and appreciation of our natural world.

About the Artist:

Phoebe Cope studied at the Ruskin School of Fine Art Oxford and later at the Royal Drawing School. Her work has won prizes and been exhibited with: The Royal Academy, Royal Hibernian Academy, Royal Scottish Academy, Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Machin Art Foundation, Cill Rialaig Project, the Moritz-Heyman Pignano Award, Ruth Borchard Piano Nobile Self-Portrait Award, the Lynn Painter Stainers, the Campaign for Drawing & the Oireachtas and Biggar & Upper Clydesdale Museum. It is represented in the collections of The Office of Public Works, The Bank of Ireland, The Blackrock Clinic, HRH The Prince of Wales, The Earl of Snowdon as well as numerous private collections.

She hails from Carlow, but now lives and works in the Scottish borders.

Further information:

phoebecopestudio@gmail.com +44 (0)1899 221591

+44 (0)7980 575377 www.phoebecope.com

156 High St, Biggar, ML12 6DH

Tuesday – Saturday 10am-5pm / Sunday – 1-5pm 01899 221 050 www.biggarmuseumtrust.co.uk/whats-on/