With this exhibit Norwood Cooper looks at the edge of the wood as a liminal space of freedom and danger – as life itself has shown to be in this past year – all through this heroic and sometimes humorous lens of the ordinary. 

“I Will Die In The Tall Grass With My Headphones On” is a painting about my own death. In this painting there are lots of insects. My dog is trying to defend my body from the vulture, but the cat just walks away from a lost cause. My Buddhist teacher told me to contemplate impermanence and this painting is my contemplation.”

– Ashley Norwood Cooper

“Crying Man With Crone And Black Swallowtails and The Crying Men Are Comforted In the Arms of the Divine Feminine (and also a Beagle) connect to the theme of The Girl’s Room Painting and the many stages of a woman’s life. Crones and Witches live at the edge of the woods. They are healing figures, but also dangerous because they have hard won knowledge and power.”

– Ashley Norwood Cooper

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ashley Norwood Cooper’s large-scale imaginative oil paintings engender dialogue surrounding the history of male dominance in the art world while shedding light on the schizophrenic role of the artist-mother-wife-teacher.