James Russell Cowper

I am a painter from Selkirk in the Scottish Borders. I have painted professionally, primarily in oils, for about 15 years.

When I was 19 I travelled to Stockholm, Sweden and I studied classical drawing and painting at The Swedish Academy of Art (SARA) , and subsequently taught as part of the main faculty for 4 years. I was also a student at the Nerdrum School in Norway where I was fortunate to watch and learn how Odd Nerdrum creates his large mysterious works.

Over time I have come to realise that painting for me is a meditative act. Whether it is a fast plein air sketch on a hillside or a larger multiple day work indoors, I am only really thinking about a subject that has inspired me to paint it and how to manipulate pigments and oils to represent it in ways I find beautiful and emotive of how I feel about it. There is a magic in that which modern instantaneous technology can never touch and I hope that shows on the canvas.

I love to paint with brushes, knives, rags and anything else that creates light and colour on the canvas in an interesting way. I am always experimenting and learning.

The natural world is a big inspiration for me. My mother and father both work with trees and plants so it was perhaps inevitable I would develop a love of painting flowers and landscapes. I am also of course inspired by great painters past and present including Mancini, Raeburn, Fechin, Fantin-Latour and Richard Schmid to name but a few.