Red's Kingdom

Phil Cooper, Perdu Peak, 40cm x 40cm, acrylic on paper

“Pushing their way through the last few Christmas trees, they arrived in a flat, barren space illuminated by strings of bare light bulbs. The bulbs were so far above their heads, they glimmered like constellations. Before them, a crag-topped mountain dominated the horizon, its summit shrouded in purple mist.“

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As Kyp Finnegan’s adventures in Chimera Book 1 continue, so too does Berlin-based artist, Phil Cooper’s adventures in pigment, texture and colour. In addition to painting the audio book’s cover art, Phil is drawing on the other-worldly sights of Chimera’s larger-than-life landscape as the inspiration for an ongoing series of new paintings, which I’ll be sharing here at Red’s Kingdom every week.

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“I think I made the decision quite early in the process of developing images for Chimera that I wouldn’t try to depict the wild menagerie of creatures and characters for the illustrations, tempting though that was. They’re so fantastical, I’d prefer them to live in the readers’ minds and not be shaped by my take on things.  I’ve veered towards environment, or the more mundane objects in the story as a counterpoint to the extraordinary beings we encounter in each episode.

So, for Chapter 6 – The Mannequin, we have the looming mountain of Perdu Peak, and a single marble. The marble, for me, conjures the idea of the ‘world within a world’ or the ‘world within a grain of sand’. Kyp has discovered the vast universe of Chimera on his own doorstep, and within that, he’s finding further layers of existence, deeper and deeper.”

Phil Cooper, October 2020

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The completed ‘Perdu Peak’ painting on Phil’s desktop in his Berlin studio, October 2020

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Phil Cooper, A Single Marble Fell, 40cm x 40cm, acrylic on paper

“With a loud clack, a single marble fell from above and rolled towards Madame Chartreuse.”

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Phil’s thumbnail sketches for ‘A Single Marble Fell’, October 2020

Phil’s marble painting in development, October 2020

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