ELLA DE BÚRCA INTERVIEWS ELIZABETH COPE ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF HER PAINTING PRACTICE.
Ella de Búrca: Could you open up on your early influences and what led you towards painting?
Elizabeth Cope: As children, my father used to take us around to all the different monuments. We had some of our family buried in Killín Cormac in County Kildare. I remember seeing Ogham stones in the graveyard (that were later stolen) and you’d have to translate them into Latin. These kinds of things were inspiring to me.
When I was nine, my sister Phil came home from Paris with a box of oil paints; it was the smell of those oil paints that seduced me into being a painter. She also gave me a slim version of the Bible in pictures, and I remember distinctly seeing a picture of Rembrandt’s Christ on the Cross (1631). My aunt was also a big inspiration; she used to play Chopin to me.

EdB: Does music play a role in your paintings?
EC: Music is more important than painting for me, because it’s the rhythm of life. I love the human voice. I find singing so inspiring. I’ve sung in my local choir, in Saint James’ choir in Dublin, and at the Cork Choral Festival. I like all kinds of music, but I have to say, I always go back to the old favourites – opera and ballet. I saw Rudolf Nureyev dancing with Margot Fonteyn when I was 19. He was 36 and she was 53. I went to the Wexford Opera Festival this year and I loved Donizetti’s Le Convenienze Ed Inconvenienze Teatrali (1827). The quality of singing was excellent throughout. I think the GPO should be turned into the National Opera House.
EdB: Do you have thematic currents in your painting practice or subjects you like to focus on?
EC: I don’t do themes. Life throws its themes at you. I paint every subject under the sun, so themes are everything. Even the most abstract thing, like the corner of a table, can become a very beautiful image to me. The shape and the physiology are of equal importance. People, animals, plants, minerals – they’re all an excuse for me to put down paint. The subject is the paint itself. Everything is difficult and everything is easy. I don’t believe in the word ‘only’ and I don’t believe in the word ‘can’t’. It’s all possible.

EdB: What is the role of drawing in your work?
EC: Drawing is the bones of painting. Drawing is essential. Without drawing, you’re nothing. Take children, for example. I’m not saying every child can draw perfectly, but until around nine years old, children have this freedom, an intuition to draw, and then what happens? They push it away. They think “this drawing thing is childish.”
I learned one really good lesson, when I went to London aged 19. I worked for a Ms Holland in an advertising agency, and she painted in her spare time. She had the most beautiful handwriting I’ve ever seen. She used her left hand. When she was younger, she used to write with her right hand, but during the war, her hand would get so tired that she trained herself to use her left hand, and she ended up using it for the rest of her life. What I say to you or anybody who wants to draw: use the opposite hand because there’s no vanity in it. You get used to the same old story with the one hand you use.
It’s better to write or to make marks of what you see, than what you think you see. We all have an idea of the shape of something in our heads, which then means we’re not observing the subject. We have to observe. It’s hand-eye coordination. People want perfection – but perfection doesn’t exist. You draw while people are moving. I love people talking to me when I’m painting them. Animals moving, children playing – that’s really important. You try to capture it as quickly as you can.
EdB: Can you talk further about the act of live drawing?
EC: On my first day at the Sir John Cass School of Art in London, there was a woman modelling – she was in her mid-70s, I imagine. There she sat, naked, surrounded exclusively by men, except for me. I spoke to her during the break, and it transpired that she was a model for Welsh painter, Augustus John (1878-1961). I mean, what a great link back to the past. If you want to be good at life drawing, you have to sit yourself, to understand how difficult it is. I’ve been at drawing classes where a lot of people have no sensitivity to the model. The model is in charge when you are drawing and painting. For a start, you have to make sure they’re comfortable. Not everyone makes a good model but the people you least expect will be good models.

EdB: I found this quote on your website: “The act of painting is like doing a post-mortem.” Could you expand on this?
EC: First of all, in making a work, the subconscious has to be there and at the same time, you have to get the painting to work, like a surgeon repairing a broken leg. You have to fix things. It’s like having a dual personality. You work on two levels: the conscious level and the subconscious level.
We’re all artists, in one shape or another. The most important thing about all art forms in my opinion, is humour and fun. Why are you doing it? The Irish author Brian Keenan was incarcerated in Beirut for four and a half years after being kidnapped by Islamic Jihad. Another prisoner, John McCarthy, said it was Brian’s wit that kept them going. He was great to be able to have that concentrated, humorous way of looking at the world. One day, as Keenan sat in his container, he was asked by his captors “What would you like?” to which he replied: “Oh, a grand piano.”

Ella de Búrca is an artist and Assistant Lecturer at NCAD.
elladeburca.com
Elizabeth Cope is an artist based in Kilkenny. A major solo exhibition of her work, ‘The Palpable Bump on the Bridge of the Nose’, was presented at VISUAL (23 September 2022 – 8 Jan 2023), while ‘Elisabeth Cope – From the Eye to the Heart’ was shown at Maison Depoivre Art Gallery in Ontario, Canada (31 August – 29 September 2024).
elizabethcope.com