Jacqueline Cope

Born 1963 Carshalton, Surrey

One thing is for sure I have to paint and another is I need spend time outside and thirdly I have to understand what is going on around me. Having now planted myself in a different country with a different culture and language my best step forward was to go out and paint and to draw. The strength of the colours and light are beautiful here in Italy and the long season of good weather gives me continuous opportunity to develop my skills at painting "˜plein air'. Meanwhile the tourists and locals always make handy models for me to practice sketching people.
In Rome's city centre, wherever you turn to look you are faced by views that leave an impression of grandeur and beauty. Painting some of these most iconic and image marketed monuments my intention was to develop studio work which explored new exciting ways of rendering them.
Previously, in England I had been working on synthesizing abstract elements with the representational and my latter work in London was based on landscape views. With my Colosseo sketches I concentrated on abstracting further the original image and experimented with paint qualities and colour combinations to reflect the monumental nature of the structure.
With re-explo...