Held Else Drawing

Born 1976 Manchester, UK Lives and works in London Emma Coop’s artistic practice is based around drawing. She completed her MA in Fine Art from Chelsea UAL in 2004. Coop regularly exhibits and has recently been included in the Creekside Open, Wales Contemporary and 168th RWA Open. Coop recently presented her first London sole exhibition at Studio 1.1 Gallery, titled: I LIVE ANOTHER LIFE. ARTIST STATEMENT I explore an affinity with nature and the elements despite living in cities all my life. My drawings document a desire to run in the opposite direction, to escape edges, things and people. Such an ‘escape’ could be experienced via sailing in a small single-handed boat around a dock off the Thames with the thrill-threat of capsize, or getting into nature and following hidden passage ways through woodland to find den-like secret places that may hold secrets, or may not. There is a restlessness in the work, a drive to create by tenacity which builds a mounting tension akin to an Antonioni film—imagine the amplified sound of the wind whilst the camera forensically roves over grainy black and white landscapes to build suspense from ‘nothing’ such as in Blow Up and L’Aventura. I draw because of its immediacy: there is a very quick direct link with the act of making that takes me right back to being a child. I use big chunky graphite sticks and the mark-making is gestural and physical. Drawn marks range from very considered light and delicate right through to dense heavily-layered scrawls; in this way each drawing contains a catalogue of gestures and emotions. I listen to music while I draw and sometimes lyrics repeat in my head and creep in as a title—especially the angsty-heartache of Robert Smith. These titles play with ambiguity and vulnerability. The landscape in this sense becomes a metaphor for a lover, and in turn brings into focus our own relationship with nature in the Anthropocene age.