Virginia COPE

Virginia Cope is a contemporary artist, living in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. It is in this environment that she produces the majority of her works.

She studied at the Saidye Bronfman Center, the Center for visual arts, and studied many years at Concordia University. To feed her inspiration, she attends painting workshops. Although the Eastern Townships are her primary source of artistic themes, she travels frequently in quest of fulfilling her creativity.

"Nature, as life, is changing and fleeting. I try to seize moments in time: the flashes of light on shimmering leaves, the kaleidoscope of colour in a flower garden, the iridescent reflections of trees on the water; to capture these fragments before they fade and disappear.

My approach is immediate and impressionistic and, to this end, oil paint serves my purpose. It has the properties which enable me to delight in the painting process itself: the flexibility, the richness of colour, the luminosity, the ability to paint thick or thin.

I use gestural strokes, fine tuning as I go along until the interpretaton of what I see is distilled to its essence. This is the challenge that is never ending and ever motivating, a journey of discovery that helps me grow as an artist.

Painting will always be a cherished form of self expression for me.