Stig Cooper - Things That Need To Be, 2025 - Oil on canvas - 64x64cm framed

This artwork is from Stig Cooper's solo exhibition 'Liminal', presented at Becker Minty Sydney.

Liminal is a word for the in-between. It describes states, times and spaces which exists at a point of change - a metaphorical threshold. Everyday we experience the liminal time between sleep and wakefulness, barely conscious as we begin to sense the world around us again. There are the ever-changing patterns of the weather or the line of the horizon, which shifts and dissolves as we move through the landscape.

For Stig Cooper, one of the most powerful liminal moments is to stand before an empty canvas. As he navigates a period of transition in his life, the term liminal perfectly encapsulates his state of being, particularly as an artist. He shares that this idea also defines his “subconscious perception and consequent interpretation of the landscape”. Advocating for the purity of the creative process, he approaches each painting with no predetermined outcomes. He does not directly copy or definitively capture any place. Instead he relies on an “acute intuitive interpretation of time and space.”

With this exhibition, Stig expands on the distinctive visual language of his atmospheric landscapes, producing a rich body of work that explores these liminal states, both physical and metaphorical. In these paintings, the sun rises and sets as turbulent storms roll in and out. The landscape bleeds into the sky above and seems to flow through the frame like water. They are scenes which mirror Stig’s artistic process, where his images are constantly evolving and there is no defined beginning or end; simply the innate impulse to create.

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