Bio

Cooper Salmon (b. 1995 California) earned his BFA in the Painting/Drawing program from California College of the Arts in 2019. Salmon works primarily with acrylic figurative painting approaches. Salmon has worked with arts organizations such as the de Young Museum and Verge Center for the Arts to support and facilitate public and education programming. Salmon was a participating faculty member at University of Memphis Middle School  during the 2020/2021 school year where he taught fine arts for sixth and seventh grade. During his time there, Salmon received an award in innovation for his unique approach to classroom learning. Salmon is currently part of a group exhibition at Soft Times Gallery in San Francisco and lives in Oakland.

Statement

I’m making a picture book. A sort of cartoon biography of modern life. It started when I was a kid. I grew up watching loony toons and taking pictures with disposable cameras. Cartoons appealed to me because they use simple lines and shapes to convey clear emotional states. I became accustomed to the cartoonish and exaggerated style of animation and began to process my life in pictures. Back then my family took weekly trips to Costco to swap disposable cameras for developed film. My seven siblings and I wasted no time in filling my mother’s numerous scrapbooks, one roll at a time. Slowly but surely our house filled with editions of pictures from this recital or that birthday. We tried to pin down and freeze all those precious moments that make up a life. Decades later I am still interested in capturing moments. The characters come and go with the seasons and the settings but the gestures remain the same. The memories that loom largest in my mind are  moments of waiting, preparation, and solitude. The ones where people really reveal themselves. Even in public settings, private moments of care, pain, and candor are at the forefront of my work. From a mother worrying about the safety of her children in the corner of a crowded party, to a couple falling in love on the living room rug, my ever expanding catalog of cartoons spotlight quiet moments in a loud world. My paintings are my way of measuring modern life in suspended animation.  

Instagram: @coopersalmonart

What initially compelled you to create your work?

My current body of work takes inspiration from all the people who have come into my life and changed how I think about the world. I view my practice as a means of documenting modern life, told anecdotally from scenes of everyday interactions between strangers and between people dear to me. These moments are useful reminders of how connection finds its way into our lives and act as little lights in the dark.  

What main topic does your artwork address and why?

The reason I make paintings is twofold: first, they are my way of marking time and processing the world. The second is to draw attention to moments of tender loving care. My paintings are about the precious joy of connection and conversely the painful isolation of being alone. One implies the other and my work heightens situations that live in between these two dominant forces. They are simultaneously mundane and sublime, but always focuses on people.  

In your artistic journey, what has been the most challenging point thus far?

My practice is quite generic in the sense that it is my way of pursuing meaning. As with many pursuits, dead ends are inevitable. Cultivating my personal voice as an artist has taken time and has been a nebulous journey of trial and error. I am constantly confronted with failure as I search for the best settings and styles to tell my stories. Only in the last year have begun to build a base of trust, confidence, and rapport with myself and it comes across in the work. A unified style and purpose embody the pictures that you see here. But it took a lot of bad paintings and patience to reach this point.  

Is there an aspect of your life that especially impacts your practice?

There is an urgency to my practice that cannot be denied. When I was sixteen, I was diagnosed with a rare eye disease that worsens my sight every year and affects my ability to drive and see at night. I have been told I will be legally blind by age forty. So, I do not have the luxury of going slow and using the next fifty years to further my practice to its fullest potential. The certainty that I am going to lose my sight drives the urgency I bring to my practice. The next few years will be the most important for my painting career. I have everything I need to offer my work to the world, everything except time.

What do you do when you find yourself at a creative block?

There are always times when motivation and inspiration do not follow us into the studio. That’s fine though, that’s normal. I often flip through photos I have taken or found of people as a way to mix and match ideas and remind myself about what I’m trying to do with my pictures. Spending time being still for a moment and mulling over pictures in my head can be just as useful as moving paint around. Patience and practice never hurt either.