TENDER BEASTS: paintings by Ashley Norwood Cooper
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Overview
ZINC contemporary is pleased to present Tender Beasts, an online exhibition of paintings by Ashley Norwood Cooper, whose work has long held a cherished place in our program. Our relationship with Ashley began through a shared belief in the power of painting to hold the contradictions of daily life — its humor, tenderness, chaos, grief, and strange beauty — without smoothing any of it over. Over the years, we have been continually drawn to the fearless emotional honesty of her work, and to the way she transforms domestic scenes, family dynamics, animals, gardens, and ordinary moments into paintings that feel both wildly alive and deeply human. In Tender Beasts, Cooper turns her attention to dogs, cats, bees, butterflies, birds, and the creatures that offer comfort and steadiness in an increasingly noisy world. These paintings are funny, vulnerable, tactile, and quietly defiant — a reminder that care, attention, and devotion may be among the most radical gestures available to us.
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I have been painting a lot of dogs. Also, cats, bees, butterflies, and the occasional chickadee.
Have I gone soft? Perhaps. But Titian, Manet, Freud, and Hockney have all painted excellent dogs. Goya’s painting, “The Drowning Dog,’ may be the most profound expression of fear and vulnerability in all of art.
The dog is a worthy subject.
Ashley Norwood Cooper
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Exhibition Works
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Press Release Text
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ZINC contemporary presents Tender Beasts
An online exhibition of paintings by Ashley Norwood Cooper
June 1 – July 15, 2026
zinccontemporary.comSEATTLE, WA — ZINC contemporary is pleased to present Tender Beasts, an online exhibition of new and recent paintings by New York-based artist Ashley Norwood Cooper, on view June 1 through July 15, 2026.
Known for her expressive, textural oil paintings that explore domestic life, motherhood, family, and the unpredictable force of the natural world, Cooper turns her attention in Tender Beasts to dogs, cats, bees, butterflies, birds, and the small creatures that sustain us when the human world feels increasingly loud, fractured, and unforgiving.
The exhibition takes its title from Cooper’s own reflection on a difficult year, one in which animals and nature offered steadiness, comfort, and a different model for being alive. “In our happiest times, dogs wait for us,” Cooper writes. “In trying times, animals and nature sustain us.” For Cooper, the dog is not a sentimental subject, but a worthy one — part companion, part witness, part moral counterweight to a world driven by performance, fear, and attention.
Cooper’ exhibition statement opens with a quote from E.T. Seton — “Not Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Astor together could have raised money enough to buy a quarter share in my little dog” — Tender Beasts places Cooper in conversation with a long art historical lineage of artists who have painted animals not as decorative accessories, but as emotional and psychological presences. Titian, Manet, Freud, Hockney, and Goya all understood the animal as a profound subject. In Cooper’s hands, these creatures become intimate, funny, vulnerable, and heroic.
Cooper’s paintings revel in the material pleasures of paint itself. Working with brush, palette knife, and often her own fingers, she builds surfaces that ooze, streak, drip, and insist on their own physical life. Her animals emerge from this tactile world with humor and tenderness, but also with a quiet defiance. They remind us to turn away from the noise, to notice what is alive beside us, and to protect the fragile bonds that make us human.
“This year, what I see is the tender beasts,” Cooper writes, “living with more kindness and more dignity than humans.” In an economy of attention — where fear, outrage, and spectacle compete for our devotion — Cooper proposes a gentler resistance: to look closely, to care for what is near, and, as she says, “just love your dog.”
Tender Beasts will be available to view online at zinccontemporary.com from June 1 through July 15, 2026. For inquiries, please contact ZINC contemporary at 206.617.7378 or laura@ZINCcontemporary.com
About Ashley Norwood Cooper
Ashley Norwood Cooper’s intensely colored, painterly, figurative work explores the creative lives of women, the awkwardness of family relationships, and the unpredictability of the natural world. Born in South Carolina, Cooper received her undergraduate degree in Latin from the University of Georgia and her MFA in painting from Indiana University. She has exhibited galleries in the US and Europe including First Street Gallery (NYC), Susan Eley Fine Arts (Hudson), ZINC Contemporary (Seattle) and Galerie Thomas Fuchs (Stuttgart, Germany). She has had solo shows at the Greenville County Museum of Art (Greenville, SC) and the Fenimore Museum of Art (Cooperstown, NY) Her work has been featured in New American Paintings and on the I Like Your Work Podcast. Her solo booths at VOLTA NYC in 2020 and 2024 garnered write ups in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, and Arcade Projects Zine (Columbia University). Ms. Cooper’s paintings are included in public and private collections in the United States and Europe including the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts (San Francisco) and Greenville County Museum of Art (South Carolina).
About ZINC contemporary
Founded in 2013 in Seattle, Washington, ZINC contemporary is committed to presenting compelling contemporary art with a focus on making women artists visible and successful. ZINC has built a reputation for thoughtful exhibitions, artist advocacy, and an engaging, approachable collecting experience. ZINC now presents intermittent online exhibitions, art fair presentations, and private consulting services for artists, collectors, and gallerists.
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