Her paintings are like a mood-song or mood-film. You play whatever song fits your mood. Upbeat dance when you feel energetic, heavy metal when you feel aggressive. Or you might play what you want to feel like. Erin Cooper paints according to her moods and memories and according to what she wants to feel like. And people appreciate it, so she learned when she started selling her work at a local shop.
She was making portraits, and found it restrictive in a creative sense. Her hobby had become like her professional activity. At her job as a webdesigner, her creative input was professional too, set within confines. Having worked at the US Air Force at the beginning of her career, and surprising all her friends when she did, she knew in the back of her mind it wasn’t what would really suit her. They weren’t going to give her the free space she needed to be creative.
What suits Erin is what suits her mood and her style, and in restrictive environments she can’t always express that. A mood can be a memory lying in a hammock under walnut trees as a child, or a mood can be seasonal with the changing natural light throughout the year. In summers she’ll lean more towards neon colors, in autumn warmer colors. Or a mood can be influenced by something like giving birth. Since then Erin has been wearing more colors and painting with more colors. The colors she chooses are often quite bright, often being in a good mood. But she may also choose muted colors for something which is intended to be happy. Her husband has also opened up to colors now, using them in a more masculin way. And she’s really happy with the reactions she gets. The people buying her work don’t know her! The honesty in that is very gratifying. They keep Erin’s mood good.
