Exhibition: 'Sky Form'

Stig Cooper paints from the heart. Revelling in the solitude of his studio, he creates with no pre-conceived expectations. Rather, he extracts the work through the meditative and intuitive process of pushing paint around the canvas. He immerses himself in music, his constant studio companion, and surrenders to his imagination. 

Sky Form is a collection of paintings which examines the evolution of the sky before, during and after rainfall. These scenes are highly emotive and evoke complex feelings; those which cannot always be articulated. Stig pushes the horizon line to the bottom of the canvas, creating a vast sense of space which draws the viewer into swirling cloud formations. His gestural palette-knife work and subtle use of tone lead the eye through the composition as he explores and challenges the parameters of visual balance. Brought to life through his warm and moody colours, these paintings invite the viewer into the artist’s world.

Stig is direct and uncomplicated in his art-making approach and resists the over-intellectualisation of his work. His landscapes are not depictions of any particular place, but are reflective of his travels both home and abroad. Every journey into the landscape eventually forms a small part of each canvas. These paintings are a pure expression of self, what the artist so poignantly describes as a “a genuine manifestation of one’s compulsion to create something of beauty.”

Stig was born in Sweden, near the Arctic Circle. He is most at ease in cooler climates, now living and working in East Launceston, Tasmania. He is a self-taught painter, employing mainly oil and wax. He also works with photography, seeking to capture fleeting moments in his travels at home and abroad as inspiration for his paintings. Sky Form is Stig’s first solo exhibition. In 2024 he was named a finalist in the prestigious Glover Prize, one of Australia’s richest landscape painting prizes, held annually in Evandale, Tasmania.