Eileen Cooper RA

Born: 1953

Eileen Cooper RA

Lots of people's lives are thrown together in my pictures, but there is also a strong sense of separateness. I find it fascinating that, in the busy lives that everyone leads, people have a sense of their own time, their own moments of reverie.’

Eileen Cooper studied at Goldsmiths College, London (1971 to 1974) and the Royal College of Art, London (1974 to 1977). For many years she was a Visiting Lecturer at the Royal College (where she was made a Fellow in 2006) and City & Guilds of London Art School, before becoming Head of Printmaking at the Royal Academy Schools, where in 2011 she was the first woman to be elected Keeper.

Well known as a printmaker and painter, her stylised work is rooted in a figurative tradition and characterised using bold linearity and formal composition. Her images are imbued with playful narratives and her protagonists are often surrounded by artefacts and imagery that testifies to the tension between quotidian and romantic concerns.

Eileen Cooper's first solo exhibition was held in 1979 at the Air Gallery, with subsequent shows throughout the UK, including Blond Fine Art, London, Artspace Gallery, Aberdeen, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester and Artsite Gallery. Since 1988, regular exhibitions of her work have been held at Benjamin Rhodes Gallery and at Art First, London and more recently at Brook Gallery in Devon where a permanent collection of Eileen's work resides.