William Faulkner once wrote: “The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that 100 years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.” I can think of no better quote to capture the appeal of April Coppini’s art, which is on display in Astoria.

On the surface of her paper (Rives BFK, “tough as nails”), a bumblebee hovers in mid flight, the lines of motion swirling about. A great horned owl closes in on its prey in a flurry of feathers and flight. A caribou strains under the weight of migration, in what we feel is the greatest struggle of its life.

By closely observing the way creatures move, Coppini attempts to inhabit their point of view as fully as possible. “The natural world is filled with tragedy for animals,” she says, many of them made by humans. “And yet, despite so much suffering, they continue in wonder and keep doing their thing — they remain dedicated to the struggle which is life.” Coppini’s charcoal drawings, at times enhanced with chalk pastels, are rendered in the style of a gesture drawing, a technique historically reserved for the human figure. By making a thousand marks upon the page, she captures the motion, immediacy, and vibrancy of living creatures. Coppini says she is drawn to the messy, raw power of the gesture drawing, which can render more finished work sterile by comparison. Coppini strives for connection and intimacy with the viewer, as she brings wilderness back into human spaces.

April Coppini was born and raised in a wooded suburb of Rochester, New York, where her home backed up to a park filled with deer and wild turkeys. At age eight, she took a class on drawing from live animals offered by the local community art museum. She went on to attend the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and Alfred University, School of the Arts where she received degrees in printmaking and drawing before moving to Portland in 1995.

Coppini lost her partner to suicide in 2017 and has navigated years of significant health challenges with one of her three children. In art school, she often felt her interest in drawing animals was viewed as less “artistic,” but while surviving her own personal tragedies, she learned to trust herself, finding her way back to drawing the creatures she has been fascinated by since youth. First inspired to work on a series of bees after learning about the threats facing bee colonies, Coppini drew her way into a series featuring furry pollinators in motion, struggling for survival in an increasingly hostile world.

The popularity of her work has exploded over the past few years, and her drawings are now collected around the world; she has also held a number of solo shows. Coppini works from a home studio carved from garage and laundry space in northeast Portland where she makes time for her art career in the midst of raising children, 11 chickens, two cats and a dog.

“Being able to start with a mess keeps me working,” she explains, “and out of all of it, somehow, I find something — a vital spark of life, the unnamable energy between things…the quietness of breath, the curve of a muscle, light bounced off a fragile translucent wing.”

Coppini’s recentshow at the Imogen Gallery in Astoria was titled “Little Bright Spots, Big Migrations,” and featured a series of charcoal drawings, several enhanced with pastel color.

“I hear the news lately and I want to go lay my face in the lush spring grass, overgrown and cool, damp,” Coppini said of the show. “And also I wake up every day to the absolute victory of seeing my once severely disabled kiddo walk around, laugh, sing, make coffee. We are inextricably linked to what has come before us and what will come after us. We all walk on the same ground; we all live, will struggle and will die.
All at once we have these little spots of brilliance — microcosms in a fleeting moment, and also part of an epic story in which all our brightness threads through, inextinguishable. This is us: hungry, laughing, angry, helpless, hurting, playing, resting … Seeing the wonder, feeling the rumble in the ground.”

Coppini’s work is a remarkable tribute to the beauty and vulnerability of the creatures who co-inhabit this world, a reminder that they deserve both preservation and understanding. 

You can view her work at Imogen Gallery, Astoria, and online at https://aprilcoppini.com

The gallery is at 240 11th St. It is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Tuesdays (closing at 4 p.m. on Sundays).