JULIAN COOPER

ARTIST

"When a piece of land inclines toward the vertical our relationship towards it changes. We can no longer walk on it and it cannot grow food for us. So we either ignore it, or it becomes an aesthetic object in itself, akin to a work of art, or as a visible record of time and weather and geological change."

PAINTINGS

LINES OF DESCENT

2018-2023

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ESSAY BY JULIAN COOPER

UPSTREAM

2014-2017

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NATURAL FORCES

2013-2014

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A FRACTURED LANDSCAPE

Tasmania  2011-2012

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MOTHERLODE

Quarries of Cumbria and Carrara  2008-2010

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EARTHLY POWERS

Painting of a sacred mountain and forgotten quarries 2005-2007

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CLIFFS OF FALL

North face of the Eiger and Honister quarry 2003-2004


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MIND HAS MOUNTAINS

Paintings from Kanchenjunga 1999-2001

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MOUNTAIN PAINTINGS

Alps, Andes, and Lake District 1987-1997

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ARCHIVE

Paintings from 1970-2000

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UNDER THE VOLCANO

SCENES FROM THE DRAMA BY MALCOM LOWRY.  1981-1984

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FURTHER INFORMATION

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Portrait Julian Cooper

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JULIAN COOPER

Julian Cooper was born in 1947 in Grasmere, Cumbria. His father William Heaton Cooper (1903-1995) was a successful painter of the Lake District, as was his grandfather, Alfred Heaton Cooper (1863-1929), and his mother was the sculptor Ophelia Gordon Bell (1915-1975). His life has inevitably intersected with the wider currents of mountaineering and mountain painting.

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Portrait Julian Cooper

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He studied at Lancaster School of Art (1964-65) and Goldsmiths’ College of Art (1965-69).
Awarded the Boise Travelling Scholarship (1969), he travelled in Europe and was resident at the British School in Rome (1969-70). He returned to the Lake District in 1975 and has developed an international reputation as one of the most imaginative and thought-provoking mountain painters of his generation. He now lives and works in Cockermouth.

Cooper has spent his working life looking for places that carry a particular charge for him and has found them in some of the most barren and inhospitable places on the planet: Amazonia, Andes, Himalayas, Tibet, Tasmania and Carrara.

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Portrait Julian Cooper

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His influences at art school were mostly post-painterly abstraction and colour field painting, later becoming interested in the Abstract Expressionists, seeking to negotiate a way through the representation-abstraction dichotomy; and to combine the surface-image relationship he found in the work of Clifford Still and Mark Rothko whilst retaining the vitality of a representational image.

During the 1980’s and 1990’s his work has ranged from narrative paintings based on Malcom Lowry’s novel “Under the Volcano”, to paintings based on Wim Wenders’ film ‘Paris Texas’, and to a series of paintings about the events surrounding the assassination of the union leader and environmentalist Chico Mendes in Amazonia in 1989.

He then went on to find new subjects among mountains, working in the Alps, the Cordillera Blanca in the Peruvian Andes, Kanchenjunga in Nepal, and Mount Kailas in Tibet.

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Portrait Julian Cooper

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He currently finds new potential within a twenty mile radius of his home in the northern fells of the Lake District, becoming increasingly fascinated with the visible interplay of nature and culture - the working landscape past and present - acted out in plain sight on the land.

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Portrait Julian Cooper

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The uplands have become a contested landscape, and there are philosophical, economic and political questions that challenge our notions of this much written about and painted region, and of who has primacy there.

Portrait Julian Cooper

AWARDS

1969-70 Boise Travelling Scholarship
1982 Northern Arts Bursary
2012 Honorary Fellowship, University of Cumbria
2019 Cumbria Culture Award

RESIDENCIES

1976 The Karoli Foundation, France
1981 Virginia Centre for Creative Arts, USA
2011 Landscape Art Research, Queenstown, Tasmania

PUBLIC & CORPORATE COLLECTIONS

Aber Diamond Corporation. Toronto; Arts Council of Great Britain; Abbot Hall Art Gallery; Allerdale District Council; Baker & McKenzie, London; Bankers Trust; Bolton Art Gallery; Brathay Hall Trust; Cumbria County Council; Davy Offshore Modules; Durham County Council; Durham University; Ferguson Industrial Holdings; Home Office; Inner London Education Authority; Kendal Magistrates Court; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne; Lancaster University; Messner Museum, Bolzano. Italy; Museo della Montagna, Turin, Italy; Mountain Heritage Trust; Northern Arts; Pentagram; Reuters; Theatre on the Lake, Keswick; Tullie House Art Gallery, Carlisle; Unilever; University College, London.

2020 

AMONG MOUNTAINS

Archive Gallery

Grasmere

2017 

Full Circle Archive Gallery

Heaton Cooper Studio

Grasmere

JULIAN COOPER, PAINTINGS FROM 1970 TO 2017

Abbot Hall Art Gallery

Kendal

2014

Reading the Rock 

Crossley Gallery, Dean Clough Mills

Halifax

Julian Cooper's 10 Golden Age Paintings

The Alpine Club

London

ONE TO ONE

Blue Gallery

Brantwood

2012

a fractured landscape
julian cooper in tasmania

Landscape Art Research, Queenstown

Tasmania

2010

BREAKING GROUND

London

2009

Cumbria

2005

PARETI, GHIACCI, PRECIPI

Museo della Montagna, Turin

Italy

2004

Kanchenjunga and Eiger

The Alpine Club

London

2004

Art Space Gallery

London

2002

Art Space Gallery

London

kanchenjunga

Brewery Arts Centre

Kendal

mind has mountains

3 Degrees West Gallery, Wordsworth Trust

Grasmere

1998

Figure and Ground

Art Space Gallery

London

1997

Ambleside Mountain Festival

Ambleside

1996

The Mountain Looks at You

Tullie House Museum

Carlisle

Hartlepool Art Gallery

Hartlepool

1995

Lawrence Batley Gallery, Bretton Hall

Yorkshire

1994

Stanley Corridor Gallery, Leeds General Infirmary

Leeds

1994

Oddfellows Gallery

Kendal

1990

International Mountain Literature Festival

Bretton Hall

Yorkshire

1984

Two Man Show (with Terence Clarke)

Paton Gallery

London

1983

Summer Show two

Serpentine Gallery

London

1978

J.P.L Fine Art

London

1974

Summer Show One

Serpentine Gallery

London

1974

Laing Art Gallery

Newcastle upon Tyne

1973

Trevelyan College, Durham University

Durham

1972

Greenwich Theatre Gallery

London

1971

Zella Nine Gallery

London












2023 

LANDSCAPE OF THE GODS

Cross Lane Projects, Kendal

Cumbria

2019 

ROMANTICS

St Barbe Museum, Lymington 

Hampshire

MINISCULE

Cross Lane Projects, Kendal

Cumbria

UNPICTURESQUE

Archive Gallery

Grasmere

THIS LAND IS OUR LAND

Wordsworth House, Cockermouth

Cumbria

2012

HEATON COOPER, 1863 TO 2012 - A FAMILY OF ARTISTS

Rheged Gallery

Cumbria

Fire and Ice

Art Space Gallery

London

Ways with Words

Theatre by the Lake

Keswick

2011

Flashback

 Art Space Gallery

London

2009

Under the Volcano

The Bluecoat Gallery

Liverpool

2008

Winter Journey

Art Space Gallery

London

2006

Art at the Rockface

Norwich Castle Museum

Norwich 

Art at the Rockface

Millenium Gallery

Sheffield

2005

A Picture of Britain

Tate Britain

London

2002

Cooper x Five

Cooperhus, Norsk Reiselivmuseum

Norway

kanchenjunga

Brewery Arts Centre

Kendal

1999

Climbing Art

Brewery Arts Cenre

Kendal

Contemporary British Landscape Painting

Flowers East

London

Mountain

Wolverhampton Art Gallery

Wolverhampton

1998

Winter Journey

Art Space Gallery

London

1997

Sublime Inspiration, the Art of Mountains from Turner to Hillary

Abbot Hall Art Gallery

Kendal

1994-92

Carlisle Open Exhibition

 Tullie House Museum

Carlisle

1990-88

Clean Irish Sea

City Centre Gallery

Dublin & touring

1990-91

Artists in National Parks

Victoria & Albert Museum & touring

Britain & USA

1989-87

The Day Book

Smith’s Gallery

London & touring

1988

From Icarus to Ariadne

Paton Gallery

London

1987-86

Recent Aquisitions

Arts Council 

Touring Exhibition

1987-89

Introducing with Pleasure

Arts Council

Touring Exhibition

1987-67

London Group

London

1986

Group Show

Paton Gallery

London

1985

GROUP SHOW

Paton Gallery

London

1982

Northern Open

Sunderland Arts Centre

Sunderland

1979

Three Generations

Abbot Hall Art Gallery

Kendal

1978

Northern Art Open

 Shipley Art Gallery

Gateshead

1977

Twelve British Painters

British Council Exhibition, Reykjavik

Iceland

1976

The Deck of Cards

JPL Fine Art

London

1975

20th Century British Drawings

JPL Fine Art

London

1972

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

Royal Academy

London










 

2023 

LONDON’S SOUTH BANK
A HISTORY

Mireille Galinou

Your London Publishing

2021 

KANCHENJUNGA, THE HIMALAYAN GIANT

Doug Scott

Vertebrate

INVISIBLE WALLS

Hella Pick

Weidenfeld & Nicholson

2020

MOUNTAINEERING AND BRITISH ROMANTICISM 1770-1836
The Literary Cultures of Climbing

Simon Bainbridge

Oxford University Press

2019

PRIVATE VIEW

Julian Cooper

Scottish Art News

2018

THE LAKES WITH PAUL ROSE

BBC 1 television, series one

London

2017

THE YORKSHIRE DALES AND THE LAKES

Channel Four television

London

The Magician's Glass: Character and Fate: Eight Essays on Climbing & Mountain Life

Ed Douglas

Vertebrate

Abbot Hall catalogue essay, Julian Cooper paintings from 1970 to 2017

Andrew Lambirth & Amy Concannon

Cumbria

2016

The Matter of the North (2nd September)

BBC Radio Four

London

The Marches

Rory Stewart

Jonathan Cape

2015

Between the Sunset and the Sea

Simon Ingram

Collins

2014

catalogue essay - Natural Forces

Melvyn Bragg

London

Natural Forces

John Spurling, Julian Cooper

The Spectator 29th March

One to One

Howard Hull talks to Julian Cooper 'the evolution of a single work'

2012

catalogue essay - A Fractured Landscape

Andrew Lambirth

2010

catalogue essay, Breaking Ground

Eric Scigliano

Country Life

Huon Mallalieu

2009

CAtalogue essay -  Motherlode

Melvyn Bragg, Howard Hull, Grevel Lindop

2008

Kailas, A Painting Khora

Julian Cooper

Alpine Journal

2007

Conversation with Hamish Fulton - Earthly Powers catalogue

Hamish Fulton, Julian Cooper

Earthly Powers catalogue

The Artists of The Alpine Club

Peter Mallalieu

The Sacred Mountain

Keith Richardson

CA1 Culture and Arts

 Spectator

Andrew Lambirth

2005

CATALOGUE ESSAY -
PARETI, GHIACCI, PRECIPIZI

Ben Tufnell

The Romantic North

Melvyn Bragg

Sunday Times Magazine

A Picture of Britain

A Picture of Britain

Tate Publication

2004

Cliffs of Fall catalogue

Conversation with Basil Beattie

Observer

Phil Bartlett

Spectator

John Spurling

27 November

Galleries

Felicity Owen

November

Painting the Eiger

Julian Cooper

The Alpine Journal

2003

PN Review

Grevel Lindop

2002

London Review of Books

David Craig

Cooper x 5 Catalogue

Inger Marie von der Lippe

The Alpine Journal

Stephen Goodwin

2001

The Spectator

Andrew Lambirth

catalogue essay, Mind has Mountains

Andrew Lambirth

catalogue essay, Mind has Mountains

Julian Cooper

RA Magazine

Andrew Lambirth

1999

The Independent

Stephen Goodwin

1998

The Spark

Border TV

The Times

Melvyn Bragg

High Magazine

Terry Gifford

1997

The Independent

Stephen Goodwin

1994

The Page

The Page, May

1991

Celebration

Granada Television

24th June

1990

Sunday Times Review

John Spurling

18th March

1987

Sunday Telegraph Colour Magazine

26th April

1984

New Statesman

John Spurling

August

City Limits

Nigel Politt

29th July

Time Out

Sarah Kent

29th July

Aspects

Iain Biggs

Spring

Sunday Times Colour Magazine

Melvyn Bragg

28th June

Artscribe

Iain Biggs

November

1983

The Tablet

Jacynth Ellerton

30th July

Punch

Melvyn Bragg

27th July

Critics Forum

BBC Radio Three

July

1982

The Guardian

William Varley

16th August

1978

The Sunday Times

Marina Vaizey

December

1975

Arts Review

Max Wykes-Joyce

10th Jan

International Herald Tribune

Max Wykes-Joyce

2nd Jan

1974

Studio International

Peter Fuller

July

Kaleidoscope

July Mervyn Levy

BBC Radio Four

1970

The Observer

Norbert Lynton

5th April

1969

Daily Telegraph

Harold Fenton

29th Oct







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