Johnnie Cooper (b.1950, Wolverhampton) spent his early years in Saint-Eustache, a suburban town near Montreal, Quebec, where he was immersed in Native American visual culture, before returning to the UK in 1960. In 1970, he studied sculpture at Staffordshire College of Art, which was convened by the renowned cosmopolitan sculptor, Stuart Osbourne. Further postgraduate study followed at Bretton Hall, Yorkshire, where from 1976 onwards he was mentored by Sir Peter Murray CBE, Founder of Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP). Cooper exhibited in the inaugural YSP exhibition alongside Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. This opportunity led to media exposure and served to launch his career. An intense period of formal experimentation ensued, leading Cooper to turn to painting in 1984. His first paintings were exhibited at the Crucial Gallery in Notting Hill, London. Cooper has worked in art education throughout his career, appointed as Head of Art at Bredon School, Gloucestershire and lecturing at Oxford Tutorial College. In 2004, he was invited to lecture on European Romanticism for the Art History department at Kellogg College, Oxford University. In 2007, Cooper spent three months in Shanghai working as artist in residence and cultural ambassador for Oxford International College. Over the past half century Cooper has shown work internationally, from Dallas to Shanghai, and his work features extensively in countless important private collections. He has exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Free Painters and Sculptors Society, Manchester Academy of Fine Art, and Mall Galleries; and in 2019 the Saatchi Gallery presented a major survey of more than 50 of Cooper’s paintings and sculptures, exhibited in London for the first time in 30 years. Cooper continues to investigate the formal and conceptual limits of painting, developing new processes that reprise motifs of his early sculptural practice and reflect his love for the natural landscape.
