ARTforce Collections

TOPOGRAPHY: a series of 8 mixed media abstract collages 18x18 on panel

Free Wallpaper, my gift to you. click on the image and there will be a link that takes you to my Dropbox where you can choose the wallpaper and save it to your camera roll. Once it is on your camera roll you can then choose go to settings and choose it as wallpaper. All images are protected by copyright.

Industrial Remnants series is inspired by a visually exciting heritage building in urban Vancouver where I live. I love the weathered, rusty textures of this building and have created a series of works that honour its past. The Wilkinson Steel building is at the foot of Cook street on First Avenue. Click image to enlarge

Paintings inspired by a visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, England. last May (2019) I was overwhelmed with the size and beauty of this monumental tree. Turner's Oak was planted in 1798 so this awesome tree is 221 years old.The day I visited the garden was a school holiday and there were children and families everywhere. Children were drawn to this tree like ants to honey. it is 16 meters high. It grows 3 cm each year.

I work with found and prepared papers and combine them with bits of fabric other ephemeral until I have a balanced composition. I enjoy the process of working intuitively.

A series of paintings called Uninhibited. These works are acrylic on canvas and are inspired by my photographs. I make a small study of each painting and then offer them as commissioned pieces which I enlarge to various sizes on demand. I like to share my vision of beauty. Painting helps me engage with the natural world and to clarify and enjoy the beauty I see there. With all the fear, hate and populism in the world, beauty becomes a form of resistance.

Stones, brass wire and shadows. Shiny and bright, flexible and strong, copper wire has charmed me into spending time with it. I can't recall where inspiration came from. I know I just pick up interesting materials and start to play. The copper wire was a gift that I have kept for years. A bent wire has an expressive gesture. When photographed from different angles, the sculptures often look like stop action ballet poses. They are lyrical to me and I can imagine music playing as I study these orgaic shapes in space.

I was playing with beautiful shiny brass wire with my fingers. I bent and twisted them giving them each a gesture. Then I picked up my collection of beautiful chicken feathers and chose carefully the ones that were fluffy that had a curl to them. I loved their grace and beauty. Each one was expressive in its own way. Then I decided I could combine the gracefulness of the wire and feathers into one unit as the wire added an extension of the feather’s curl and exaggerated each gesture which I manipulated to please myself. I placed a large bouquet of stemmed feather “flowers” on my table. However, I couldn’t stop playing and creating these units. I was addicted! Soon I had bags and bags of stemmed feathers and I was inspired to make a curtain. Whilst making the curtain I had to make choices as to how I would hang them and realized quickly that with the addition of spotlighting I could multiply the artistic effect of my feather strands by incorporating their cast shadows. Finally, I hung the curtain which was 17 units of approximately 6 foot long segments against a white wall and turned on the lights. The cast shadow created by the lighting was void of all detail except the flat shapes and lines. The contrast was stunning to me and I looked at the shadows as a drawing on the wall. I call my piece: Feather Shadow Dancing Sherry Cooper, 2016

There are eleven paper sculptures in my project called My Fragile bio-Degradable H'Art. Each is made of paper and is therefore very fragile as well as bio-degradable. Each sculpture is exhibited hanging from a tree limb in a public park and exposed to the elements of wind, weather and human curiosity. Here they stayed to decay and crumble engaging the notion of impermanence in art. This project celebrates the universal theme of Creation and Destruction and makes the viewer pause and contemplate how society values art made to be impermanent and temporary. This photographic record will mark the project's existence. I am grateful to the Vancouver Foundation Small Arts Grants for supporting me in this project.

Trees inspire me to paint. I use the intersection of branches as a playground for my mixed media. It is here that I draw attention to the unique and beautiful structure of each tree.

I slowly trace the contours of the tree branches I have chosen, enjoying their rhythms and gestures. I make positive the negative areas created by the interweaving of tree branches and develop the dreamcoat of the tree in these spaces.

these paintings tell the story of a heritage orchard on Gambier Island founded in 1895. Learn more about this orchard. http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/pdfs/bchf/bch_2006_02.pdf. My narrative paintings are set on Gambier Island in Howe Sound. This is where I have my summer home. It is here that a judge and his family emigrated from Norway in 1896 to plant an orchard. He was well educated and could read and write 6 languages. I wonder why at the age of 41 he chose to come to Gambier Island? I researched archives, vital statistics, census and land titles to learn more about his life. I interviewed his daughter-in-law many times to understand his story. I produced paintings about his life as I imagined it to be.

Arbutus, Ferns and Coastal Rocks stimulate my creativity and enjoyment of my summer place on Gambier Island. The landscape's textures draw me close to examine their beauty.

A collection of themed work using gouache on yupo paper. The organic imagery is inpired by landscapes and nature's patterns using energetic calligraphic brushstrokes. Gouache is an opaque watercolour that sits on top of the yupo plastic paper. After the paint has dried, I remove sections using water to create the content I want. The painting must be protected under glass.

Small affordable paintings of crows priced at $100.00. for 8x10. Price includes a simple wood black or white frame.. 8x10 mixed media of inks, acrylic paint,and pencil crayons. Crows are the icon of the Eastside Culture Crawl. My crow paintings are sold at this annual event from my Parker Street Studio.

Pen and ink drawings. I never get tired of black and white rendering to express directly the energy of my vision. Simple pleasures like weathered wood can be captured with pen and ink, the subtleties of which a photograph could never achieve.

Sherry's visual art practice is nourished by having been employed as an usher for the City of Vancouver for over 35 years. Some of the world's most renowned performers, such as Yo Yo Mah, Cecila Bartoli and performing groups Kirov and Bolshoi Ballet Companies have delighted her.Sherry retired from this work in 2015 to spend more time painting. Sherry has been a facilitator of many workshops,contributed to journals and has an extensive history of exhibitions in Vancouver, the lower mainland and the province of British Columbia. To view her accomplishments, enter this gallery.