About Jill Cooper
I’’m an East Coast Canadian artist and a lot of what I paint is influenced by growing up on the ocean, being a women, and my background in designing spaces.
Growing up in Newfoundland, I spent countless hours on the edge of the Atlantic, sketchbook in hand, fascinated by the possibility of what lay beyond the horizon. That sense of possibility - and the feeling that there is always something more just beyond what we can see - continues to run through my work.
My path to becoming a professional artist was a roundabout one. I studied Computer Science and Architecture, earning a Master’s of Architecture from Dalhousie University, then spent more than a decade designing television environments in Toronto for CBC, CTV, TSN, Discovery, W Network, and MuchMusic. Later, I owned a custom framing and art gallery business in Chicago.
Those experiences continue to shape the way I paint. I can’t help but think in three dimensions when I work and I often paint the layers I see as “furthest away” from the viewer first and build the colors closer with each layer on top. I also bring my sense of scale, colour, composition, and proportion to encourage the feeling of movement - from my years of designing spaces to look dynamic, have more depth, when seen onscreen. (Long before the screens we watched were in our hands!)