Talent led astray by lighter side of life

There’s no getting away from the enormous energy and talent of Elizabeth Cope, even if that energy is sometimes misdirected.

Cope, who is based in Ireland, trained at Chelsea School of Art, among other places, and this background is clear in her diverse range of paintings and prints, which veer from finely honed etchings of animals to sometimes patchy and unfinished looking oils.

If a painting doesn’t work out, Cope will cut the more successful elements from her canvas and use them to create a new composition. It’s an unusual approach but she wastes nothing in the making of her art.

At times Cope looks like she has inherited directly the mantle of les Fauves, such as Dufy or Rouault. Such work can appear either as homage or derivation, depending on your perspective, although the truth probably lies somewhere in between.

Cope’s painting ranges from portraiture to still-life and from landscape to seascape. Most have an autobiographical element and chart her prodigious travels. Cope’s early portraiture, from the 1970s, in particular, shows great promise — thick, often pallid oils built up in layers using great daubs of paint, applied with a palette knife and brush.

In the 1990s Cope travelled to Somalia as a war artist. Although she describes herself as from the “happy” school of painting, her work in this genre can be dark.

Her work as a printmaker deserves attention. She has used etching as a powerful medium and the immediacy of the technique, with sketchy line and monotone vision, has allowed her to capture animals in a way that transcends the representational.

The core of Cope’s oeuvre is the decorative, with a firm basis in colour. Although there’s nothing wrong with celebrating life’s joy, there’s a sense in which her talents have been misdirected because they lack symbolism, metaphor, message and political charge. The work is redeemed by some witty and occasionally painful domestic and personal narratives that hint at complex relationships and ageing.

If energy, commitment and passion were the only criteria to judge these works, the verdict would be outstanding; a more intense focus on the complexities of life would catapult it into another league.