Exhibition of Drawings and Sculpture

Exhibition of Drawings and Sculpture
Prospero’s Cave
“Spirits to enforce, Art to enchant.”
William Shakespeare .
An exhibition of Recent Art Works by Stephen J. C.Cooper
Known Professionally as Stephen Jon
(Drawings, Sculptures and Masks).
September 22nd until October 20th
12 noon until 5.00 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday. Free Entry
Moreleys Lane, Corby Glen, Lincolnshire NG33 4NL
at the Willoughby Memorial Art Gallery
Dryads/Mimi Spirits/ Personifications of an Essence of Trees. Early investigations through drawing. Making manifest the invisible. Oak twigs as start point.
I have spent from April till October on this drawing. Perhaps because of the Covid Effect, I have not been able to make sense of the drawing. It feels confused and muddled and lacking in meaning. A turning point for me perhaps. I shall just wait to see what happens next.
By the by, I don’t like the way that this blog site has changed. Finding it much harder to manipulate. Therefore, I am using this platform far less than I used to.
The elements all fall into place in my mind but not on the paper. I therefore looked at the more formal aspects, shape, balance and composition in order to find some sort of resolution.
Three headdresses of red deer , in three phases: Winter, Spring and Summer.
These last few weeks I have been working on a new mask/rondo of the face of Robin Goodfellow, also know as Puck (by Shakespeare in The Midsummers Nights Dream). He is the Classic British Hobgoblin. I played him as a small boy and have felt a connection ever since. The design for this happened all very quickly, woke up one morning and sjust started, as if I was waiting for this moment for the sculpt to come. Not a lot of thought though aware that some sort of thinking has been smouldering away for decades. A few drawings and a mini version happened in a few days.
This is a Green Man version. I shall try out a nut brown version. I don’t want him to be of our world, he has to be not quite human. But I don’t want him to be a variant on Shrek, even though that character does have a strong connection with European Medieval Gargoyles. Robin is not to be found in Churches but out in the green Wood.
From drawing through miniature (12cm x12cm) to slightly over ice (rondo is 50 cm in diameter). Most unusually for me, I used grey clay instead of red clay, for the sculpt. No idea why, just felt right. The whole process has been very intuitive.
I feel that I have known this character all my life and that it has taken these six decades for him to have emerged fully formed.