Don Cooper

American, born 1944

Room With a View - A Return to Nature

© Don Cooper

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

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© Don Cooper

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

© Don Cooper

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

Room With a View - A Return to Nature, 1984

Artwork Details

Materials

oil on canvas

Measurements

overall: 46 x 74 inches (116.84 x 187.96 cm)

Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Credit

Purchased with funds provided by the Awards in the Visual Arts Program, 1985

Accession ID

1985:10.1

Don Cooper’s work belongs to the “fantastic realism” school of Southern American art. In his allegorical paintings, he aims to create “something I’ve never seen before—something described by its difference . . . the mystery of the space between reality and the imagination.” During the 1980s, Cooper executed a series of paintings in which Stone Mountain, Georgia, serves as the geographical backdrop. In these mystical images, he explores the history of mankind’s complicated connection to nature, often deconstructing the binary relationship between animals and human beings. Room with a View—A Return to Nature portrays two elegantly dressed men and a woman in the woods alongside wolves and bears. The sunlight dazzles through the trees, creating a neon-washed atmosphere that is simultaneously enchanting and disconcerting and in which some type of sacred occurrence is taking place. The figures are placed to form a triangle; significantly, the number three is sacred in many religions and traditionally symbolizes unity. This shape is repeated twice more by the baying wolves at center and the two bears and a wolf in the background.

Label from Menagerie: Animals on View, March 11–June 4, 2017