ABOUT ME - fine art

MARY SEWELL COOPER is an abstract expressionist painter with basic education in art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a Ph.D. in Anthropology. For the past six years, she has studied with Peggy Zehring, a Kandinsky inspired abstract artist and founder of the La Veta School of the Arts (LVSA) in Southern Colorado. Mary is on the LVSA Board, where she also teaches classes. Her latest paintings begin with collages of charcoal on paper and texture. They are then covered with layers of acrylics on unsealed wet canvas. They are later put on stretcher frames and sealed. Cooper says, " The amazing thing about this technique, which sometimes begins with the artist blindfolded, is the spontaneity and symbolic content of the art. It seems to come directly out the Universal Unconscious.” Many of her images are of animals and other beings, who are thought to have spirit power in shamanic consciousness. Shamanism is the earth’s oldest religion and involves direct contact with higher levels of consciousness and spiritual beings. It believes that everything is alive and interconnected and is practiced by Native American and many other world cultures.