About the Artist
He has had numerous one-man exhibitions throughout New Zealand, and has also exhibited in France, England, and Australia. He exhibited first with the Auckland Society of Arts in 1959. He was later a judge for the Bledisloe Medal in landscape painting, awarded by that Society. |
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He made his initial mark as a master of watercolour and oils, but now does mainly large acrylic works. He combines impressionism and expression with abstraction, and adventurous use of colour. His paintings are available in New Zealand and internationally. Check the Galleries page for information on, and links to, leading private galleries, especially in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, with a population approaching 1.5 million. |
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Many New Zealand specialist print galleries have displayed his work which has been used by Auckland International Airport and for a Readers' Digest cover. His work is in possession of many private collections in New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom and USA and Europe. Two paintings hang in the Governor General's Auckland Residence, several in Paris, and in Venice. His sixteen solo exhibitions are listed below. |
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| His largest work is a six-metre long, illuminated mural made of plastics, with the brilliant colour intensity of stained glass, at the entrance to the School of Medicine, University of Auckland, New Zealand. | |||||||||||||||
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| A large acrylic diptych hangs in the Fisher and Paykel Education Centre, Auckland City Hospital.. | |||||||||||||||
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| For many years calendars containing twelve reproductions of his New Zealand landscape paintings have been released nationally in New Zealand. | |||||||||||||||
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| Commission for gilded crest for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists | |||||||||||||||
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| A number of his works have been used by architects and interior designers | |||||||||||||||
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| Limestone Cliffs, Rangitikei Acrylic with Gold and Copper Pigments 76 x 140 cm (This painting was a finalist in the International Artist Magazine Competition, August 2002) |
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His work radiates a love of the diverse unspoiled New Zealand landscape and the very visual experiences , with which New Zealanders find themselves surrounded. His love of colour and his experimentation with it have stimulated an exploration of European landscape in his frequent visits to his family there. His paintings express the differing and often transient interaction of land forms and human contact. He believes artists should be using, in creative landscape, many lessons from past and present masters. Extensive visits to Europe exposed him to the use of golds in the work of Gustav Klimt, Russian icons, illuminated manuscripts, and also to the work of European colourists. He has now combined these influences with his decades of water colour expertise . Turner taught us the power of atmospheric imagination. In Harold Coop's paintings can also be found the visual interplay of rectangular shapes and colours as taught us by Mondrian., the abstraction of buildings and landforms of Lyonel Feininger. and the power of Bridget Riley's shimmering bands of colour. New acrylic media allowing use of washes, as in the adventurous American watercolour school, and also metallic pigments, have enhanced his creation of precious icons of the New Zealand experience, midway between landscape and abstraction. The gold is used, as by mediaeval artists, to signify something precious, in this case our land. |
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Current works available:Please visit the New Zealand Galleries page. The websites of the galleries showmore current works available |
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Previous Solo Exhibitions:2007 International Art Centre, Auckland. 1979, 1981,1982,1984,1993,1996, 1998, 2000 John Leech Gallery, Auckland 1983 Antipodes Gallery, Wellington 1983 Gallery Pacific, Auckland 1978 Aquarius Gallery, Hamilton 1977 Barry Lett Gallery, Auckland 1973 Osborne Gallery, Auckland. 1961 Moller's Art Gallery, Auckland 1961 Westport Arts Council |
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Previous Group Exhibitions:Pacific and Portfolio Galleries 1998 Major Auckland Artists Exhibition, Pumphouse Gallery, Takapuna |
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Examples of various media:
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