Dave Cooper

[The Shine]

Heya,

Don\'t know if any of you know who Dave Cooper is or not so I thought I\'d share a bit.

Dave on Wikipedia
Dave\'s site



All this to say that Dave is a regular customer of mine and he gave me this the other day and I was stoked about it and wanted to share. Now I have to bring it to him so he can sign it for me.

 

[matty1001]

hehe. Some of his oil paintings are really wierd!

 

[The Shine]

It\'s even more odd if you meet him as he\'s just your average everyday nice guy, both in demeanor and appearance, a real pleasure to speak with too.

I introduced him to my blog/our hobby and he was blown away by this whole scene. He’s pushing me to get into the sculpting side of this once he found out I was interested in giving it a real go.

 

[Ogrebane]

Has a definite Ren and Stimpy feel to it.

 

[Hieronymus]

His paintings are amazing. There\'s a three-way tension in them between the comical/cuteness of them, the distorted disturbing quality and even eroticism that really pulls me in. I\'m reminded of some apintings by Chicago artists from 1960\'s Chicago, like Karl Wirsum,Jim Nutt, and Ed Paschke\'searly works. Futurama has always been one of my favorite shows, too.

 

[Hinton]

That\'s some very strange work; disturbing and kind of cute at the same time. It\'s hard to tell if the people in his paintings are playing, making out or trying to kill each other. Guess it\'s all subjective; how a person interprets them probably says something about their character.

 

[philologus]

I don\'t mean this to be critical or offensive; but my first thought on seeing the paintings was: a bunch of nude Monica Lewinsky clones cavorting/fighting. Is this a glimpse of Bill Clinton\'s fantasies?

 

[Hieronymus]

There\'s a term for it in Japanese, kimo-kawaii, which means grotesquely cute. When I look at Dave Cooper\'s paintings, I feel that I\'m looking at something that I\'m not supoosed to be seeing. I\'m trying to get a similar tesnsion in my own paintings, a conflict between beauty, eroticism and revulsion from the hybrid nature of the animal/human combinations.