Faces Immortal, from Aspen Magazine

“Portraiture is a curiously interactive art form, a collaboration. Subject and painter sit across a small space, in good light, and work on each other,” says painter Hilary Cooper. ” I am fascinated by the human form and face, and I’ve always had a knack for achieving a likeness.” Now Cooper, one of the three lucky artists chosen to have a studio in the Red Brick Schoolhouse Arts and Recreation Center, is preparing for an upcoming exhibition in Farfalla. Cooper met Christina Medri, Farfalla’s manager, through mutual acquaintance Frank Perry, a locally-based filmmaker. When Cooper asked the picturesque Medri to model, they became friends and came up with the idea to hang Cooper’s pictures in Medri’s Italian restaurant.

Well-established in New York, Hilary hopes the exhibit at Farfalla will give her some local exposure and earn her portrait commissions in the community. Her most prominent subjects include Erica Jong and George Plimpton, and she particularly enjoys painting writers because of the stimulating conversation during the modeling sessions. Then again, she may be partial since her husband, Chris Crowley, is one.