Justin Cooper – Yard Works: Geometric Botanical Studies at CAMi

Daisies (detail), Justin Cooper

The Transcendental Art of Justin Cooper.

Justin Cooper is currently showing his most recent artworks at the CAMi Main building in the Sutphin Gallery. The exhibition, Yard Works: Geometrical Botanical Studies contains wood panel artworks, many in pairs or larger groupings, and a selection of smaller graphite drawings. There is truth in advertising to Cooper's title for this show, as his subject matter consists of detailed, almost scientifically-executed, portraits of many different plant and flower varieties.

The overall look and presentation of Cooper's specimens echo the work of pioneering nature artists such as John James Audubon with his birds of North America, and lesser known names in the botanical field such as Pierre-Joseph Redoute and Priscilla Susan Bury. 

The detailed individual subjects depicted by these artists in their volumes of collected specimens, whether bird or plant kingdom, are made  monumental and sculptural by the center placement on the negative space of the non-distracting backgrounds of their pages. And there is an acknowledgment of the poetry of the natural world by these artists shown by the careful observation and meticulous rendering of their subjects. 

As individuals, the artists seemed infatuated to the point of obsession with the microcosm of the universe that they chose to capture in their portfolio collections.

Justin Cooper, with his latest exhibition, displays work of a similar transcendental mindset, one uniting individual spirit, nature and the divine. 

And there is something of the yellowed age and faded colors of old book plates that we also associate with them that seem present in Cooper's works via his choice of materials and technique. He achieves a warm and worn antiquity though the use of a the birch wood surface that forms the negative space around the plants he describes, and with the thin viscosity of his colors which mimic a sun-faded or time-bleached effect.  

Siberian Iris Tiles (detail), Justin Cooper

Cooper's technique, when speaking of the panels, is not just paint on wood, but rather pyrography, or 'writing with fire,' a traditional craft of creating designs with controlled burn marks.     

The exhibition manifest that accompanies the show explains that Cooper's works are a continuation of geometric botanical studies of plants in and around his Garfield Park home, with his latest emphasis on native Indiana wildflowers. 

The series and groupings seen in the current show, the multiples of a single variety, are inspired by the subtle changes he has observed in the individual plant varieties over successive growing seasons. 

The dark linearity of the underlying burn marks together with the thin oil glazes of his built-up colors, as explained in the artist statement, “are meant to evoke stained glass, ceramic tile, and wood inlay – art forms that have long inspired the development of this series.”

Origin of Materials and Methods. 

Evocations of stain glass, mosaics and wood inlay, perhaps even crochet knitting and fresco painting, are seen in Justin Cooper's work as early as his show Zero at Galerie Penumbra in the Murphy Art Center in 2006. Cooper's work in that show consisted of mixed media on thick wood panels with built-up glazes of color and gold leaf flourishes. 

His many various panels displayed in that show were like the opulent opening pages of Medieval manuscripts with their symbolic figures, complex gleaming decoration and the nebulous code of the parables suggested by their alchemic cast of characters and objects.    

Zero, Justin Cooper, 2006
postcard from the exhibition by the same name

Julianna Thibodeaux, writing for NUVO Newsweekly, reviewed the show in a September 2006 edition,

“What to make of such deliciously perfected images of owls, bats, bees, lilies, roosters, spiders, rabbits and the like? Even these, richly suggestive, do not stand alone; some surround like a halo the symbolic image of the feminine, a perfectly proportioned female figure, hand open, the divine receptive vehicle. But Cooper throws in smaller, more enigmatic symbols, like spaces on a game of Zen Monopoly: we see an Rx symbol, an umbrella, a devil's pitchfork, the chemical formula for water, the nuclear symbol, a car battery a pair of dice, a seashell. Profane and sacred, human and divine, and points of grey in between.” 

In an evolution of his imagery, but a continuation of his techniques and materials, Cooper presented new works in 2011 in Indianapolis at a show called Missed the Boat.  The exhibition was also reviewed in NUVO, this time by Charles Fox, on October 10, 2011,

“Justin Cooper fills Primary Gallery with a fresh, engaging  and witty group of paintings depicting various animals in the face of impending environmental catastrophe. Drawing on influences including Aesop's Fables and 18th - 19th century Japanese printmaker and painter Katsushika Hokusai...

He keeps his color palette limited to mostly blues and whites, aside from the colors used for the animals and gold leaf, which he uses effectively to render halos around the animals and embellish decorative details of the paintings.” 

The same writer also covers a following show by Cooper, Spark Fishing, in the March 18, 2013 issue

of NUVO,

“As thoughtful and realized a show as one has come to expect from Justin Cooper who typically builds his shows around a single idea – and in this case, it's about the attempt to harness energy...

The reintroduction of humans into his art is welcome; female figures are prominent within the body of work (with especially stunning impact in Collector). Despite depicting the search for energy, the net effect of Spark Fishing is to leave the viewer with a feeling of peace.” 

The article contained the image of Cooper's Wave Length from the show, which is an interesting mash-up of a decorative foreground element reminiscent of Maya glyphs, an art nouveau woman in profile at the center, and surrounding, Japanese print-style clouds or energy fields that billow and swirl. 

Over the course of these shows and the years, Cooper would establish his favored materials – wood panels, thin and translucent layers of paint and the decorative embellish of gold leaf – that he continues to utilize in his current geometric botanicals. 

Toward an Infinitude of Flowers.

The transcendental movement was birthed in opposition to the prior poetic indulgences of the romantic era. 

Of several main and related practitioners, Ralph Waldo Emerson preferred essay to fiction, and observation to ecstasy.  Henry David Thoreau lived in a cabin in solitude for two years and made a careful chronicle of his simplified life. Emily Dickinson was to ponder a vast and eternal universe from the seclusion of a room in her father's home. 

There is something analogous to the transcendental approach in Cooper's latest art.  

He has traveled from the conceptual, symbolic and surrealistic narrative of his earlier paintings to the refined decorative simplification and distilled perfection of the current pieces we see in Yard Works.   

Zinnias (detail, central panel), Justin Cooper

The gallery is filled with a wide selection of flower varieties, including specific examples such as Eden Climbing Rose, Dandelions, Black-Eyed Susans and Daisies.

Cooper creates his wildflowers as if assembling Legos. In a method described in his artist statement as first interpreting the various parts of the plant – flowers, buds and leaves – and then rendering them “as discrete  shapes and components,” which are then assembled as parts into the compositions. 

It is a process for creating believable 3D images out of nothing more than lines and planes, not unlike object modeling for video game environments, but with a hand-made analog touch.

The wood burnt drawing and geometry of design are apparent in the finished product. In them, Cooper achieves a result somewhere between Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto 6, that is to say, not clunky, not hyperreal –  but a harmonious in-between –  a  balance of mathematical schematics paired with the colored washes of his flowers on the wood. 

There is something old and something new in them.  Cooper's work would hang as comfortably in a cottage on Walden Pond or a bungalow in Garfield Park.  Or perhaps even a 3D-printed house anywhere in the future. 

For now, they hang in a beautiful display at the newest art museum in Indianapolis, CAMi.

Justin Cooper – Yard Works: Geometric Botanical Studies continues through September 20.

Mark Diekhoff, August 2026

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