Eileen Cooper

0:00Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, wherever you are in the world. My name is Robert Diamond and you're listening to Talkart. Welcome to Talkart. Today I am feeling magical and that is a slight reference to what some people have called today's guest's work, five decades of exploring the female experience through autobiographical references and also referencing mythology, but there is this kind of term of like magical realism, which is a really beautiful idea, I think, because it brings to mind the kind of everyday, which could be seen as a very mundane thing in many ways, but sort of making it magical or having supernatural elements involved. So it kind of really helps to tell stories and I think it really helps viewers of the paintings and of artworks generally to kind of access it as some kind of escapist realm maybe.

1:02And I think it just is a really wonderful kind of movement in a way and style. And today's guest has been, as I said, making work for more than five decades and is someone that I kind of grew up being familiar with through the Royal Academy because my mum was a massive fan of her work and then I became a big fan and then in the last few years we've actually become friends and it's been a really wonderful thing. I actually saw her recently at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which many years ago she even curated, which is a very cool thing, which I'd love to chat about in a bit. So we are actually on the eve of a new exhibition, which is about to open, called Learning to Fly in London and we'll also be talking about this particular new body of work because I just think there's some of the best paintings our guest has ever made and I'm really happy that we're actually talking on the eve of this beautiful new exhibition. So I would like to welcome to talk art, Eileen Cooper. Thank you. What a great intro. How are you today?

2:03Where do we find you? I'm in my studio with lots of new beginnings, having packed everything up for Learning to Fly, which has gone to the gallery. So I'm in a nice stage of starting again. Yeah, and this is a new exhibition for your gallery in London, Christian, Hedgell, Gurd. How do you say her surname? Yeah, it's the biggest challenge. Christian Hialejada, I think Hialejada. She's Norwegian and she's a force. She's a true life force. I think we can call it a Christian for short. Okay. For those who haven't been before, where is the gallery in London? So no, she has a few galleries. Yeah, the gallery in London is in Tana Street, just off Bermes Street. So it's very handy for anybody traveling. Now you talked about new beginnings there because you obviously just shipped all your work to the gallery in London. So in the show itself, Learning to Fly, I think there's an element in a few of the paintings of kind of new beginnings, actually, which is a quite interesting idea because Spring

3:05and the arrival of Spring and kind of renewal, and there's a lot of flowers, but not just like, I don't know, like mundane flowers, they're really vibrant flowers. They all seem to have a lot of energy and they feel very alive. Can you speak a bit about this idea of a new beginning or Spring? Suppose it's a privilege to be thinking of new beginnings at the ripe old age I am. Flowers have always been important. I try not to be too sweet with them. I want them to be forceful and they crop up from time to time and then they disappear. But in this group of work, which is in two groups within one show really, there are the studio-based paintings and the more magical paintings which are about flying and falling. And I've always made paintings with figures flying. From time to time, maybe one decade, there are no flying figures. Then they appear again. And from time to time, I've always made paintings about the artist at work, falling and flying with big themes for me.

4:05One of my favourite paintings is actually called Learning to Fly, which is what the show has taken its title from. There's a woman floating in the sky. It's almost like there's a hurricane happening. It also weirdly reminded me of someone diving into water. And then there's a whole group of trees underneath her. In my work, often the horizon line between a sea horizon, the water, and the sky is often obliterated and the two merge. But the falling paintings were prompted by watching again some studio-gibbly films in particular weathering with you, which is a beautiful film. And it's about being caught up in the weather, which of course we are, which is completely terrifying. So although my figure looks at home in the air, falling and in control, I think there's always a feeling in nature or the nature that I represent, that there's an uncertainty. Figures in trees is a big subject as well.

5:06I kind of like my figures to get off the ground. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm leaving. Just remembered something that the learning to fly isn't my original title. It was taken from something that was written about me in about 1979 when I had one of my first exhibitions. And the review was in art scribe, which was a really good British art magazine at the time by Andrea Hill. And she reviewed me as this young artist at the beginning of her career. And she entitled The Peace Learning to Fly. So I always wanted to reuse that. And from time to time, I kind of thought, is this the right time? Is this the right image? No, I'll keep it. But then the studio Ghibli film unlocked something in me. And it all came together. There were a few more paintings, which we can't quite have room for. So there's a whole group of them. But I did want to show the studio work paintings as well. So it's a show of two halves. And the learning to fly one with this figure kind of floating in space in a way, or perhaps

6:09falling, brought me to another body of work. Because when I think of your work, for some reason, I must have seen something in like the 80s, 90s or early 2000s, maybe, of two figures symbiotically kind of floating together. And that's something that's really imprinted in my mind. And in this exhibition, there's actually a work called Fall, which has figures, but this time, two figures kind of floating in space or interacting with each other. And there's another one called Weathering the Storm, which I thought was a really great the way the bodies are kind of entangled. And there's a real strength of support. It's almost like friendship or something between these two. I think weathering the storm is both a reference to getting through on a day to day, including our dealings with the weather. But also the strength that you get in a relationship that might have gone through those patches where you weather the storm in relationships and friendships. It was actually a comment that Kristen said to me quite a long time ago, maybe six months or a year, about something.

7:11And she said, oh, we just got to weather the storm. You know, it's so true, but it set me off on a whole group of work. So sometimes I can be prompted by poetry or songs or just a phrase that somebody says. So you were born in the 50s and you grew up in the north of England, and particularly in the Darbyshire Peak District, is that where your kind of early fascination with nature began? I mean, it's probably very obvious. Yes. But I wanted to kind of talk a bit about those early formative years and how influenced you were by nature. I don't think I realized it till I left the northwest. So Blosset where I'm from is a small town in between Manchester and Sheffield at the bottom of the snake pass. And it's what they call the dark peak of the peak district. So it's quite bleak. It's quite a bleak landscape, flat with Heather and quite mountainous, big flat mountains and Pete. So it's not a pretty place, but when I began to locate my figures as a young artist in

8:14a landscape, that was the landscape that began to emerge. So I think I appreciated it more in retrospect. I desperately wanted to escape my hometown, you know, like I think those young people do. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? And then the echo of your past sort of comes to your present through the work. Yeah. You know, I make that crazy mistake of calling it home. Are you going home? Have you been home? Of course, my home has been in London since 1971. But you still have like a kind of soul home, which is where you were. I think so. Or yeah, even if you're no longer there. And even though I wanted to always escape it, yeah, yeah, it still comes back to you. And in the 70s, you studied at Goldsmiths. Yeah. What was that era like? Because I know you were in a really great group of artists, selected by John Thompson at the time. Other artists that were around you, you know, have gone on like yourself to become part of the R.A. And have become very famous. So what was it like for you back then? It was incredibly exciting.

9:15We were aware that we were the first John Thompson year and that he was doing exciting things. So it became a fine art course for a start. So I was working next to performance artists. You know, I was 18, just 18, been educated in a fantastic book, very small further education college in Ashton underline. I'd done my foundation. So to suddenly realise that there were people doing performance art was quite a shock to me. I feel that somehow they must have seen something in me that desperately needed all this stimulation. You know, I'm ever so grateful that John Thompson and the group of artists at that time, Basil Beatty Buttervin, who were on my interview when I was 18, I'm very grateful they accepted me because it was the most wonderful time and I had brilliant tutors like Richard Went with a Tim head. My criticism of it probably, as I got older, was that there seemed to be no place for women artists at that time. But gradually women began to teach there.

10:18But certainly I didn't have a role model female tutor. I was going to ask you about that because I was interested in the kind of institutional setup, you know, as a young artist and what, and whether you had to really like defend yourself in those early years to kind of just even get any kind of respect because I know back in the day, people were quite patronising and like, you know, and still are probably in different places. You're absolutely right. I had to fight my corner and it didn't really come that easily to me, but I suppose I've got a strong northern voice. Maybe I sounded more confident than I was. Also art schools were a place which were not touchy-feely. They were combative. So we used to have these, I think John Thompson introduced this, these huge public arena seminars about an individual's work. So you'd put your work up and we had a lot of space because in my second year we were in a dock warehouse in Surrey Docks, which was a fantastic studio.

11:22But you'd get maybe half a dozen tutors and maybe 20 students across all years coming to view that and to chip in. It was completely terrifying. I think also it was ended up in tears. I don't know if I ever did end up in tears, but students now would be horrified. Really, yeah. I think it's actually a really interesting process that from what I've heard from the 70s, 80s art education because I feel like you do have to learn. It is really the word to defend. Like, what is you believe in? So even if people are saying it's not for them, you can sit back and take it constructively but also be like, actually, no, this is what I am, who I am. This is what I want to say and this is why. And I do think sometimes nowadays people are too quick to just be like, oh, is that what you think? I'll try and change myself. But actually there could be something within you that is the right track. You know, so we do need to learn to defend what it is we believe in whilst also listening constructively. Yeah. I think as a teacher a few years later, when I was teaching at St. Martins, I always gravitated

12:26towards the students who were having a tough time because I knew how hard it was to defend yourself or even to recognize what you were doing and what you had to offer. What potentially made your work special? How dare you do it? How dare you make that work? What was that all about? It was tough, but I mean, it was enjoyable and I changed my life going to art school. When you first got to art school, were you already really passionate about figuration and people and nature and combining all of these languages or was that something that came to you later? It evolved. I think from drawing the figure. So from life drawings, so we hadn't on my foundation course, we were never given oil paint. We weren't ready for that yet or maybe they couldn't afford it or we couldn't afford it. I can't remember. There was never any oil paint. We had gouache, charcoal and a few other bits and pieces. But the figure was key and the figure with an imaginative slant to it.

13:30I did lots of self portraits and I used collage as well. I remember when I had my interview, John Thompson really grilled me about my self portraits and also he was fascinated as to where I'd been to school up there. I actually went to gloss at school. I didn't go to high school in Manchester or anything, which were the better schools. But I had every opportunity, you know, very, very lucky, wonderful teachers all the way through from primary school. I had teachers who kind of singled me out, so art became my thing. So I think I was fairly confident when I got down to goalseness. Even though I didn't know what any of it entailed. What was it you think at that age, but even now, you know, later in life, like how do you feel about drawing and why is drawing so important to you? So I think you understand the world through drawing. If you look at somebody sitting in front of a window and you think you understand it and you can visualize it, you don't really know how complex that is until you've tried to draw it. The other wonderful thing to draw from is other art.

14:32If you draw from things in the National Gallery or any gallery, you really begin to understand how they're put together. So drawing is a tool to record and understand the world, but also for me in my second year at Goalsmas as a real release into an imaginative world. So when I started to draw from imagination, feeling and memory, I kind of stopped drawing from life. I've actually come back to it decades later, drawing portraits from life. But most of my career, I was working imaginatively. And there's an amazing drawing by you in the National Portrait Gallery collection, a self-portrait, but also another one of another artist, Kathy Pilkinson. Yeah, Kathy Pilkinson. And I love those two works because of the kind of full body scale. It's like the whole of you almost like standing. And I was really struck by those. And you've actually done an exhibition not long ago kind of looking at your drawings more.

15:34I'm a big fan of your drawings. And I think it's brought a lot to my understanding of your paintings, like the relationship between them. And now the drawings are feeding back into the paintings, and I think particularly with the group of studio-based works in learning to fly, they are very much informed by the portraits. So I have to thank my students really for getting me back on track with portraits because when I gave up teaching in 2017, I'd always taught part-time, and it had been a big part of my life. But I just began to invite my ex-students, who lots of them lived locally in South London, if they'd come to sit for me. I think Hannah Perry was the first person who came, and I hadn't got a clue how to draw from life. And she looked so great and sassy and confident. And I started on small bits of paper, like 15-minute, 20-minute sketches. And now I don't work that way at all. I do them over several days on a very large scale.

16:37And Fanny Pirelli came, and lots of my recent graduates came, and I got better. And there was no pressure with them, because most of them knew how hard it was to draw. And probably a lot of them drawing wasn't part of their practice. So I didn't mind them seeing me struggle. It was great. It was kind of like liberating not having their judgment, I guess. And they were also being there in a supportive capacity. And they were probably as nervous as I was being drawn, being scrutinized. And of course, I don't know if that's just me, but we do get onto a very personal level. You know, something about you're staring at somebody intensely. You know, you might start with what was their journey like, getting here, but pretty soon you're onto all sorts of things. I had amazing conversations with them. The sort of conversations I wouldn't really have had with them as students, because that was always talking about their work. Yeah, it's really interesting that connection, that kind of tenderness as well, or intimacy that happens in those situations.

17:39Because in a way, they're not, they're not everyday occurrences. Are they kind of staged in a way? The studio itself is like a place for you to come alive. You know, it's like a set up, isn't it, really? Yeah, it was great. I've probably done over a hundred of those portraits. And I think I got a lot of understanding from working like that. So it was very nice to have this new aspect to my career that I didn't quite know where it was going, but it began to filter back into my imaginative work. And now, actually, after doing a lot more portraits and some commissions, I can set up the portrait in a more imaginative way. So I begin to tell a narrative that's a new thing that's happening, a bit of a narrative in there. Yeah, I mean, we can give an example, actually, if people are going to go and see the show, but there's an incredible painting called Red Studio with Pienes. It's like the artist working in a sketchbook, sort of painting a portrait of themselves in a mirror. And then you have a canvas behind with the same image.

18:40So it's a painting of that set up. And then you also have Pienes, but you have a little one of those, I think they're from like Chinese restaurants or something, but there's a little cat with a moving hand, a nodding cat, exactly. And they sometimes have hands that... Hands, that's right. But I love the kind of circularity in that image and the storytelling within it, and all the kind of different elements of making an image. So that figure, all my figures are partly self-referential or myself as a younger woman, or younger people or friends that I'm really attached to, my daughter-in-law, my students. And it became a mixture of maybe a part of me, part of them, and also some of the portraits have drawn. So it's an imagined person, but it stands in for lots of people, really. Yeah, and I love the one where you're lying on the table with a kind of palette of different colors. It's a really beautiful one that with the light. I feel like you're getting this idea of almost waiting for inspiration,

19:40because I think being an artist, you sometimes, you know, you have the pressure on you to turn up to the studio and actually make something, but I love the one where you're lying on the table, and you're not actually painting in that one. You're just almost waiting for inspiration or all the way. I love the way you can't. You describe it as me, which I know it's me. I keep thinking of you. To some extent, my guess out is, yes, it's both personal and universal, so it's her as well, or even him. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the one where you're actually, you have like a, you've painted a figure inside the vase, like in the water with the flowers. I love that painting. Thank you. Her head's above the water, though. So she's squashed into a very big vase, and I've always loved the way in medieval painting figures of different sizes, as not necessarily a logical use of perspective. You could have a very big Madonna with very tiny angels. So I like to disrespect all the rules of perspective.

20:42So she's squashed into that vase, but her head's above the water, she's not drowning. And there's also the recurrence of cats in these paintings. Where is the interest in animals? Like, are they domestic house cats? Are they your cats? We've had cats. My daughter-in-law has got two very assertive blue British cats, and they feature quite a lot. I think there's often an empty space in a painting for me, and an animal just walks in. So in those paintings, it's cats. Recently, it's also been bears, and over the past decades, the tiger has been there. The tiger first appeared when I was a young mother, and this kind of strong sense of protection, and don't come near my babies. I'll snarl at you this tiger. So animals are very important, and dogs as well. Well, you have like a howling dog or howling wolf. That's right. It's a howling wolf. It's like fishing itself, yeah. Yeah. He's sitting very comfortably on the man's lap.

21:43Yeah, in a treehouse, or in some kind of treehouse structure, but I really like that as a structure as well, because it almost echoes, I don't know, one of them reminded me almost like a church or something, but I wasn't sure what to do. So I think sheds and chapels and treehouses are all inspiration for me. And in the first painting you mentioned with the howling wolf, the building is kind of on stilt in water. That's another thing you're aware of people in the weather, and they deal with this flood, but they live on stilts. And we had a treehouse in our garden. It was nothing like that. It was a, it was a pretty solid affair over many years. But now I'm really fascinated by getting up high, getting into the trees, the precarious nature of it. So I like uncertainty and balance, the question of balance in my pictures. So whether there's a threat there, I don't want them just to be exuberant and life-affirming.

22:45I want to paint the whole picture if I possibly can. I was also thinking a lot about, you know, over the last 50 years, essentially, you've been making art non-stop. How is it to like keep going and just to, you know, consistently continue? Because, you know, I have days as a galorist where I'm like, oh my god, it's so much, you know, I've been doing it 16 years now. And I think every so often you get to a point where you're just like, you've been pushing so hard and you just get exhausted. And then obviously you need to go in, holiday, have a break, just get out of what where you are. But then I always come back to it, you know, with just as much kind of energy and vigorous kind of intention that I always had. But what is it for you that keeps you pushing forward? So one advantage I have over you and you're dealing with lots of artists you're promoting lots of artists. Whereas I'm just really dealing with myself and the things that I love or the things that I'm afraid of or, you know, the things that I want to improve.

23:45I'm always striving to improve. I think that's what I do as an artist. I think if I'm going to go into the studio today, I want to get better at what I do. And that's a challenge. And of course, I realize now that sometimes you lose things in pursuing a kind of not excellence. I don't pursue excellence. But pushing forward, then a kind of rawness or innocence that maybe my work had, probably up to me having a family that was a very different kind of work to the work that exists afterwards. But yeah, I wake up wanting to do something better and more exciting and try something. I like to work across different disciplines as well. So from time to time, I've done ceramics. And I've even worked in bronze. And I've made jewelry. Or I've worked with somebody to enable me to make jewelry. Printmaking is a huge part of working collaboratively with artist printmakers. Yeah, I wanted to talk about printmaking

24:46because that's another memory I have of your work is I think perhaps even my earliest memory of your work is actually prints. I think possibly through the summer exhibition. Yeah. But why is printmaking so important to you? How many prints have you actually made so far? Because I always think what an interesting book or exhibition it is. Thank you. Yes, I agree. It would be a great exhibition. Probably I did one print when I was a student at Goldsmiths. Then I never touched printmaking till about 1990 when I was beginning to get well known. And I was invited into printmaking studios to work with them. And then I got invited to teach at the Royal College in the printmaking department. And that was a great eye-opener for me because I could begin to make prints and I could spend time asking my students, how did you do that? So I felt I was learning as much on that course as they were. And I got to work with the technician so a whole world of printmaking, woodcut etching, at life I thought it was some extent

25:46but I've never been any good with really with life or I find it too subtle for me. But of course the obsession for printmaking comes from two things. One, it's like drawing. If I'm cutting in a woodblock, I'm drawing with a tool and following the line and working in a very emphatic drawing way. And that's incredibly satisfying. The other thing was that it gets you out of working alone in your studio and you work collaboratively in a workshop and that's a wonderful thing. I'm sure all printmakers will say that. Yeah, for sure. You rely as well on the master printmaker or on their team to actually get the results. So it's a real team effort printmaking. And I really love master printers the way that they psychologically because they're kind of artists themselves. They actually get into the head of who they're working with to always think about color choices and decision making and mark making. They can bring out whatever it is they can do technically that you might not even know.

26:47What does some time mean for you in your work? The reason I ask is because I know there's obviously autobiography deep buried within all of your work. But I feel like that in a way they're quite timeless. They're almost like a temporal. Like I don't think they necessarily are fixed in one time era or point. And maybe that's their success because I think as time goes by they still have this kind of relevance, the universal kind of appeal. That's really perceptive because I did think a lot about the time that my figures might be situated in when I was a student. And I think that's part of the reason they were on the clothes. They were maybe clothed in color. But if I had painted them with clothes on in the 70s, they'd have all had the platform heels, bell bottoms. And some artists did that and I like their work and they were of a period. But I was always disturbed by that.

27:48And of course the art I'd looked at a lot was art where maybe the clothes were kind of sketched on with Poussin or somebody like that. You feel the figures in naked underneath. So I was happy to make unclosed drawings and paintings for a long time. And then eventually it was very curious and kind of modest decrept into my work. And this was just after my mother died. I did my first closed figure from an imaginative perspective. And now they move from being closed on clothes, sketched in clothes or clothes that are quite defined. And that's another thing that's coming from the portraits. The clothes are quite important in the portraits. Very important actually. I think I only did about two naked figures. And I prefer to draw a closed model. I don't really like drawing naked models. I felt it was uncomfortable for them. The olden days of life drawing, when I used to do life drawing,

28:48I used to think this model is feeling quite uncomfortable. And one horrible position to hold for 40 minutes. And I thought she's hungry. I didn't like it. I'd love to actually interview a life model because I've never got around to it. And I really should do that because I've had a few right to me over the years on Instagram and places. It would be a really interesting episode or episodes to sort of explore it. Because I know there's certain people, even the pop star Madonna actually, she was a dancer and she ended up modeling as a life model. And it's interesting that connection to dance as well. Yeah. All those kind of things. You know, talking about clothes in the National Portrait Gallery, self-portrait, it's actually called self-portrait in a black dress. And partly why I love that work is actually the movement of the dress. And you use charcoal and pastel and watercolor in that drawing, which also adds to the way that you really feel the shoes and the dress. Because you've got this some long black dress on, but you've also got kind of broke shoes leather shoes.

29:49And I was really into it on a kind of in the persona or the personality that came across. Thank you. I always felt that a self-portrait couldn't be flattering. And I don't think it is. And I also thought, is it too easy to just make a portrait of myself in an apron in front of an easel next to a palette? So I did wear that dress quite deliberately. And yet I've got charcoal in my hand and I've got my glasses pushed over on my head. And that is definitely me. I can't pretend it's anything other than. And I have now done a group of self-portraits. But I think that's one of the best. When you make a group of self-portraits, do each work tell you something different about yourself? Do you sort of discover sides to yourself that surprise you? To be honest, I think mostly those things happen in imaginative painting. I discover more about myself when I look back at my body of work and I kind of read and

30:51interpret what was going on at the time. I think with the self-portraits from life, I'm more concerned with trying to get some sort of likeness. Yeah. And some of those that group I mentioned were actually paintings. Whereas my portraits, my big body of work, tend to be all drawings, not on canvas. Yeah. And the portrait of Kathy Pilkinton, which is just an amazing image, by the way, that's a work on paper as well. That one, she's like sat for those who haven't seen it with like a doll on her lap. And she has amazing like fishnet tights and kind of old fashioned shoes and a really cool shirt. I mean, it's a really distinctive portrait. And thank you. She's on a very tall stool as well. And the drawing is very long and thin. She's a gift to draw because she just came with that doll as signifier for herself. And she's always got great clothes on. Never what you'd expect. So really good to have a model like that.

31:52And she was late. We were in a hurry. Everything about it was good. You know, it was urgent. Yeah, it feels urgent actually. I know you mean. It's like she has to get up and rush off somewhere. Yeah. She's a busy woman, all artists of busy people. And I know her well enough. It wasn't a problem that she was late. You're an artist who has a very distinct, recognizable style. You know, even if you've got a hundred paintings on a wall, I can always spot your work. When did you sort of recognize that you had this unique language in terms of drawing, but also painting because there is a total depth to all of your paintings. And there is 3D elements to it. But there's something about your work that has a flatness or a kind of distinctive line, I would say amongst that kind of real world depth. How did that all develop? My obsession with line and constantly restating the line gives them that feeling. But I perhaps think about the very first art I ever saw.

32:54Was probably in our local church, stained glass windows, amazing ultramarine and red and gold in the windows. Those amazing colours and of course dark, dark lines, emphatic lines where the glass is held in place. So I think maybe stained glass windows had a lot to do with my first kind of absorption of what art could be, the lead mix, the line. Comics as well, you know, I had comics as a kid and I saw cartoons that strong linear element to the figures, everything held in place by that line. So I think all my formative exposure to culture and art was those kind of things. I don't think I went to an art gallery until I was 17 and on foundation course. What kind of comics or animations were you a fan of? So Tom and Jerry, really, yeah. All of that stuff that was on Pop-I was the first thing I ever saw on TV,

33:57which was probably, when did we get a TV? Oh God, 1960. Can't remember, I'd have been about seven, maybe a bit before then. They would have been black and white then. Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, and they were quite small when they were the screens. Very small. Yeah, I remember because yeah, my grandparents and my mum and dad, I think in our house, our first TV was a tiny little wooden TV with a kind of dial on it that you would turn to like change the channel. My hamster escape can go into the TV. Blue up. No. Yeah, he crawled in the back. It was one of those that went down to the ground with probably the speaker in the bottom half and the screen at the top. That was the end of Hamster. Is it important, do you think, to have a distinctive kind of visual language? Because there's obviously some artists who manage to do it, I don't know, in sculpture or even through doing abstract paintings. Do you think it's something you can develop or is it just something that's almost natural like a DNA thing? I think it's more like DNA.

34:57If I wasn't forever restating what I do, just shifting it slightly, painting something out, restating the line, putting it in more specifically, and forever fiddling with the line, but hopefully in an expressive way so that each time I redo it, it looks fresh. Obviously that doesn't always happen, but that's what I strive for. I used to look at a lot of other artists and think, well, all their work looks different, but actually that's not so true unless people work across a lot of disciplines. Maybe they move from film to watercolor to clay and then things begin to look different, but I think if you're working within a medium like painting, a signature does develop. And maybe that's something to go with or fight against, from time to time, I do fight against it. But then the urgency of making the work takes over and you forget about what you came in the studio to do. The work has its own momentum.

36:00I actually wasn't familiar with your ceramics until researching this episode, but when was it you sort of decided to try and experiment and explore ceramics? Because you've made quite a few, and there's an amazing one called witness. It's like one of your paintings, but actually then the arms become the ceramic. Because some of the ceramics you've made are more like vessels where you paint on them, but I was really taken by that particular work because I loved how it was like merging sculpture with painting. It's kind of both at the same time. So again, I owe that to art school, not when I was a student, but when I was a teacher. I was invited to teach at Campbell World School of Art and having been on very much fine art courses and then a painting course at the Royal College, I was always curious about the departments, but they were quite segregated. But as a tutor, I could wander into ceramics and annoy people and ask them what was going on. And there were these three wonderful women, Janice Chilenko, fantastic potter, Grenis Barton, who helped me, and just to sort of shut me up,

37:07oh, do you want to do a plate? Do you want to fiddle about with these lasers? A Jackie Ponceley was the third one. And then from time to time over the years, I'd been touched with them and I worked with Janice towards the end of her life, but across the road from Campbell World School of Art, there was this fantastic avenue with unmade road, really, not an avenue, with studios in it, fun, God, place. And I got to know people there. And then I began to work with them. I actually got some funding from the AHRB later on, but in about 2000 to really pursue it. And the witness series that you just mentioned are hand built with red clay. So I had this wonderful ceramicist Annie Turner, who is truly, truly wonderful and has so much knowledge and has a lot of recognition in her own work now. But she taught me to coil and I used her studio and with her help, I hand built those in a very robust red clay. The other works that you mentioned tend to be more

38:11decorated pots where somebody threw the shapes for me. I just painted them so that they're two very distinct ways of working. But I think that my heart is in those early pieces that are very primal. And actually, you ended up exhibiting them later at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, but alongside Picasso and Picasso's ceramics, which are obviously a whole universe in themselves and they've become very collectible now. What was that like? And did you already have a kind of respect for his ceramics? Oh my god, yes. And respect for everything Picasso does. Did sculpture, printmaking, drawing, everything. So my chance to do quite a big survey show at Leicester Museum came along because things like the Picasso ceramics and their collection of German expressionists, prints and in fact, their wide collection of German expressionists and resonated with me. I also had connections with Leicester. So got the opportunity to do this show curated by Kathleen Soriano, which was my working conversation with key works from that collection. And the Picasso's

39:19was, you know, a big part of it. So I exhibited a lot of work that I had shown at the time. And these were pieces in my personal collection that I'd held onto. So it quite significant for me. And then to top it all, Leicester fundraise to add one of my ceramics to the collection. What other artists old or new do you kind of take inspiration from or at least like Solis or encouragement or the energize the way that you feel about making art yourself? Well, lots of artists of my own generation who were part of my generation older. I love the work of Ken Kiff. I love Ken Kiff. And he talked to me about our ideas. And actually, I think Ken was one of the first people to say, you should really do printmaking. Or maybe he said, we should really do printmaking because we could really exploit woodcut. He was very specific about that. And most of his conversation wasn't about subject matter, although his work is so rich in subject matter. But with me, we talked about

40:23techniques and other art. He loved Chinese art. You showed me wonderful Chinese landscapes that then he worked from. So Ken was a great touchstone. Paul Aurego always had been further back. I'd always like the work of Alice Neal. But I'd forgotten about her really until I started to do my portraits. And then she came back to the resident. I was very lucky to have a year's, not a year, a term three months studying in Paris when I was at the Royal College. So I went to their studio there and immersed myself in all the museum. So I look back a lot, but I also look further back and I tell the cultures as well. So Indian miniatures Japanese prints have been big source of inspiration. And possibly the flatness that you mentioned earlier comes from those kind of things, particularly Indian miniatures. They're very flat and they've got these beautiful colored backgrounds and they're in gardens and landscapes. It struck me just thinking about Paul Aurego too,

41:25because of the inclusion of kind of myths or mythology or allegory or even literature as a vehicle to kind of tell personal stories. But it was often again like an access point really for the viewer, even if it's subconscious. There's a familiarity that I think is within all of those languages, which when presented in the painting is actually a really useful tool in a way. Yeah. She's just a genius, just incredible character, very lucky to have her as a friend. Even though there was an age difference, we were kind of emerging in the London art scene at the same time. So we showed you some of the same galleries. And I think she's probably responsible for me joining a gallery. She asked her dealer at the time, could you help Eileen? She doesn't have a dealer. And he introduced me to someone. So people do great things quietly on behalf of their friends or acquaintances. I try to be the same. I always try to support other artists.

42:26Well, yeah. And I mean, there's so many artists I know that have either been taught by you or at least like supported by you as a friend. And I hear your name, but from all different generations of artists as well. It's really, really wonderful. Do you remember having kind of strong friendships with other artists who are female? Do you know what I mean? To have solidarity of an experience or something? Because I was I'm really fascinated just because I wasn't around. I was a kid in the 80s, but just how hard it was. And I think people can forget. And I think even now, you know, and I think people at Hetty Judor have been doing amazing work, you know, writing books about parenthood generally for both dads and mums, but particularly mums. And also recently with this whole kind of movement, which has been taking flight in the last few weeks on social media about how difficult it is to get employed as a woman over the age of 40 say. It's just all nuts. I was wondering whether whether you had a group of like other women that you could turn to to like, or men who supported you? I think I'd be very supported by other artists. One of the things

43:28that happened for me when I had my children, of course, is you go into this parenthood thing for a couple of decades. So, you know, you don't have the day-to-day contact, but prior to that, I was in a really quite important show called Women's Images of Men that had been put on passionately by a group of women. And there was an open call in Timeout magazine, which was basically the place where you found out what was happening. And I was successful in getting my work in there. And that group of women were pretty significant. Not everyone gained any notoriety or following and were continued to be overlooked a lot of them. But, you know, there's something unsaid with other women. You can just roll your eyes and think, oh God, there it goes again. Or, you know, you can support people who get very competitive about it. But men have been very supportive. I mentioned wonderful tutors that I had

44:29better than a battle beauty. I don't think they understood me necessarily, but they really believed in me. And it was particularly exciting to be elected Royal Academy Mission when they were both academicians. So, I'd see them a lot socially having had that period, seeing them a lot as a student and then you get on with life for about 20 or 30 years. And then beginning to see them again as colleagues at the Royal Academy. How important was it for you when you became a Royal Accommodition? Did you feel seen or what was it like to finally get that kind of accolade as well? Remember when I was elected, which was 2000, so 25 years ago, the Academy was still a different place. I mean, it meant quite a lot to me, but it didn't have the QDoS, I think, that it has now. And it's become a very forward thinking institution and is still artist led. But it was going through changes then and there were very, very small group of women artists. So my great friend at the RA

45:32was Jean Cook, Jean Bratby, Tiny, Inheritis. And we used to come home from Royal Academy dinners together and share a taxi because she lived further along in South London. I mean, you know, you think my generation had itself, but oh my god, there's no comparison. There was even a time at the Royal Academy when the women weren't invited to the dinners, the women academicians, they could stay for drinks and peanuts, but the Royal Academy missions were an all-male dining club. That was even in the 60s, I think, that changed. It means a lot to me to be Royal Academy Mission. And also, you know, it was such a privilege to teach at the Royal Academy schools, which is a three-year postgraduate programme at no cost to the student, so totally on merit. And I was very aware that that really changed people's lives as we accepted them or sadly, didn't accept them. Yeah, and that's actually funded a lot by percentages of sales, isn't it,

46:32from the summer exhibition? Yeah, from the summer exhibition. Which a lot of people don't realise, but you're essentially helping artists to have free education, which is so rare these days. One of my favourite series of work by you was a kind of shadow puppet. There's one called Swan from 2012, where you've got your hands and a light shining onto a wall with a kind of shadow puppet. And it reminded me a lot of childhood, but also of the significance and importance of light to you within your work as a whole. And it was that body of work that kind of made me look at your work again differently. You know, I love it when you discover smaller bodies of work that you then can reanalyze somebody's whole like Erver in a way. Can you speak a bit about those shadow puppets and how that body of work came to be? When you have your first torch as a kid, and you're bed at night, and with your sister or your brother there, you make foxes or dogs or the shadow of something on the wall. That's what they were about. So people with their hands

47:33and against the wall. And of course, in a way, that's early theatre and making art on the wall. I don't know where the idea came from. I must have seen it in a book or something. I thought this is rich imagery for me and then pushed it away in all directions. But the swan one, which you mentioned, I still have, and I still love that painting. And she feels very Indian to me. She's partly doing as if she could be frozen in a moment of exotic dance, but her hands in the shape of the swan. The thing I loved about shadow puppets was when I was a kid, it was so much fun, the invention of it and the kind of transformation of something that's just your hands in front of you, and it becomes a bunny rabbit or even it could become something sinister, kind of like a nightmare. Like there was something quite scary about them, when you're really young, if you're falling asleep at night, and it almost conjures up ideas of nightmares or something a bit more sinister. Well, of course, I like that. I like the dark side to it, even with something that's supposed to be as lovely and protectors as childhood. I was very aware of darkness in my childhood.

48:38Yeah, that group of pictures. Thank you for mentioning those. It's something I really, hold dear, actually. I really love them. I do include shadows a lot, and I did want to do a show about shadows. From time to time, there's always a shadow appearing as a kind of an extra person in a work. The shadow is there. I did some work a couple of years ago in Turner's house or four Turner's house to be shown there, and very fascinated by the staircase, the small rooms, and very little electric light in that place, so full of shadows, and the kind of weight of the history of what's gone before, who's lived there, who lived there after Turner. He sold the house in his own lifetime, and it was lived in at one stage by a family with five kids, which brings it down to earth a little bit. When did you first acknowledge that you would be an artist or you would make your life? I think it was probably when I was in my mid to late 20s, and I graduated from art school, and I was beginning to exhibit. Probably I'd had a couple of one-person shows,

49:42and I thought that this was the moment I could put artist on my passport. Up till then, it was like 50-50, I didn't know if I'd be able to carry on at all. I never imagined as a child I'd be an artist, ever. Even though you were making art from a young age. I was always encouraged. It didn't seem who are artists. They're certainly not me or people like me. That's a good thing that that's changed. I didn't know any artists as a child. There wasn't an artist I was aware of in Glosset. Actually, up the road in Motram, of course, Lowry lived. We were aware of Lowry, and I used to go on past his home on the bus, going to college, to Ashton underline. Knowing of Lowry was something extraordinary, but not really understanding anything about it, because he was a very old man. How could I really relate to that and think of myself as an artist? Amazing. Well, I've loved this. It's been really wonderful to chat to you in depth.

50:42In every episode, I ask a few questions at the end. The first is, if you could do an imaginary art heist and take home any artwork, what would it be and why? I think I've been asked about my favourite art work before. Without thinking, I can just say, it would be Titian's Diana and Actian from the National Gallery. Although it's a very dark painting with Actian being eaten by his own hounds, the thing I love most about it, I love the brush work and I love the creation of this glade that the action takes place in. Do you go to the National Gallery to look at it? I'll be honest, I haven't been to look at it for quite a long time, but I know it's there and I go into the National Gallery. It's probably my favourite gallery. I probably prefer it to take, if I'm allowed to say that. Yeah, of course. That's free. I mean, the majority of it. I know they have paid exhibitions there, but there's such a huge number of mind-blowing masterpieces, really.

51:43And it's a play for us all. It's just incredible. Yeah, it's looking particularly good since it's been redone the Saintsbury Wing. And they've got wonderful Fran Gellico and Jotto. They've got early Italian painting, which I really love. I look at a lot. So we're very spoiled by the National Gallery. And my next question is, what is your favourite colour? And I deliberately didn't talk about colour yet because I feel like one of the major things in your work is colour. So I thought you could elaborate a bit on that after you pick your favourite colour. So my instinct would be to say blue, but I've done a lot of paintings with red in them, but I think red's more of a terrifying colour. And blue is just a colour that I'd always turn to, really. I'd like to use colour and knock a colour slightly, so I'd use red and knock it to omba or knock it to orange. And the same with blue, but that memory of stained glass windows, they're very red and blue. And in fact, I talked to Ken Kiff about colour or he talked to me about it and he said,

52:48I'm a very red green person, I lean. I think you're a very red blue person. And I thought, oh, I'll take that. I'll take that for the UK. And I think that's a great compliment. And my paintings are full of red and blue and it's taken me years to debt to use green properly. You did make one amazing green painting that reminded me of like when I used to live in a Primo's hill, weirdly, because it's like people lying on the green. So 2022. So that was quite a long time that I avoided using green, but then I used to like the very green that painting. It was green. That was also post-COVID when we were rediscovering the world and going out into green landscapes. And I had used green accidentally a bit in printmaking where it mixes and it appears on the multi-block mixing. But yeah, Ken uses yellow and greens so beautifully, reds yellow and greens. As does Van Gogh, Van Gogh's an amazing artist using yellow and green. Yeah, I'm

53:50stuck with my red and blue. It's interesting thinking about Ken and your work because if you think about psychology and the kind of untapped consciousness or something like our shadow self maybe even who are talking about shadows, do you think making work for you is cathartic on some level or like that it reveals another self? I know you spoke about it retrospectively going back and looking and you can analyze where you're at at a certain time. But do you think it's art making is important to you for that kind of catharsis? Totally. Yeah, I think it really keeps me sane. I don't know what I do without it. I'm a person who lives to work really. That's right, isn't it? Not works to live. I live to work. I love that. The final question is what is the best advice you've ever received? So I've said I always had great teachers and probably when my life really opened up when I went to foundation at Ashton underline and my teacher there Bill Clark, he'd say it in a kind of one sentence with packed full of information and the information would be be true to yourself and

54:54always take risks and try to enjoy it. So I've said three things that he said today, but I do try to take risks within my painting because it's not as if I'm on a real tightrope. I'm not taking risks like people who every day work in hospitals or on building sites. My work is within my studio, my risks. And I think the paintings where I've taken bigger risks are the better paintings when I do something drastic. Yeah, it's interesting that idea of risks. I was thinking recently about that David Bowie phrase that he said about standing on your tiptoes like if you can't touch the ground and you're in the water or something, that's the best place to be as a creative. I was talking to a young, a young artist, but I wondered if that was relevant to you as well because... Oh god, yes, that's a wonderful, wonderful comment. Yes, just to make it so uncomfortable so you're keeping your head above water. There was someone the other day that did an interview and they I think it was Maurizio Catalan, actually, the artist. I think he was saying that like in times like

55:57this, art can't save lives and it can't change the world or something. There was like a kind of sentiment about how art isn't useful in a kind of, you know, because it's true, like it's not going to save people from a war or from all of the crises that are going on in the world. But I was also thinking about how crucial it is to protect art as a place for the soul and as a place for hope. It might save a life in terms of like if someone sees an image or an artwork even on their phones these days, it might just sort of keep people going, you know, holding on somehow. I agree. And of course, it probably saves the life of many artists who would be floundering in the world without art. And it's something that you do regardless of income. I think people make art, some people make a lot of money out of it, some people make none. Why did they carry on doing it? Out great cost to themselves to carve out time. And I think it's also a means of communication.

56:57And so we're communicating with the people who go to see art and we're communicating with other artists as well. So I think it's full of hope. Me too, Lange lad, you do. Well, this has been beautiful. Thank you so much. And I'm so glad we finally had this conversation. We've been talking for years and I really have to apologize to you because so many occasions where I wanted to do it. And Russell too, actually, we were desperate to come and even one point we were going to come and sit for portraits. But I think both of our schedules have been so insane. We never made it to your studio. But one day that is a dream of mine to come to your studio and see you. But for everyone listening, you can go to Kristen's Gallery in London and see this wonderful new exhibition in London. Yeah, so learning to fly by Eileen Cooper is from the third of September until the third of October, 2026. Are you on Instagram as well? Yes, I'm at Eileen underscore Cooper. All right. I'll link to you as well. But everyone listening, thank you for listening. Thank you, Eileen. I've loved spending this time with you. Me too. And we'll be back very soon. Bye. Bye.

57:59You've been listening to Talk Art with Robert Dyer-Ment. Follow us on Instagram at Talk Art, where you can view images of all artworks discussed in today's episode with music by Jack Northover. Please subscribe, rate and leave us a comment wherever you get your podcasts and tell your friends about us too. Thanks for listening.