about

‘Through her ongoing painting of the temperate rainforests and waterways of the Blue Mountains, M A Cooper highlights our innate connection to the natural world. These cool blue-green atmospheres afford us an opportunity to contemplate the consequences of human culture on the environment. Yet Cooper’s eco-critique is sublime rather than strident. Her practice represents an enduring personal awareness, and a deep spiritual engagement with the unique environments of the Blue Mountains. The work reflects a fundamental yet often ignored, or misperceived human truth – that of our real place as beings within nature, not beyond, or outside it.
Time spent in the artist’s studio reveals a highly technical approach and an adeptness at working in oils, watercolours, and conté. Cooper speaks of creating work in nature and in the studio as evoking metaphors of existence reflecting and reminding us of our collective human condition. Through her articulation of our place within the natural order, this artist demonstrates that she is an emerging artist whose work urges us to pay more attention to our personal life journeys in these complex times.’

Associate Professor Ian William McArthur
Metadesign | Graphic Design | mad.lab UNSW | Art & Design UNSW

Winner of  the Wilderness & Adventure Painting Prize Mt Wilson Spring Blossom Festival 2017; 

1st Prize Blackheath Art Prize 2015; 

Award of Excellence Medallion for Watercolour 2015 Royal Easter Show; 

2nd Prize Drawing 2015 Royal Easter Show; 

Highly Commended Norvil Art Prize for Landscape 2014; 

2nd Prize Blackheath Winter Open Prize 2013; 

Finalist Paddington Art Prize 2012; 

1st Prize Blackheath Art Prize 2012; 

1st Prize Blackheath Winter Open; 

Winner ‘Best use of Colour’ Hornsby Art Prize 2010; 

‘Peoples Choice’ Blackheath Art Prize 2010;