Dave Cooper's Underbelly
By LJ Douresseau
March 14, 2005 - 15:35
Fantagraphics Books
Penciller(s): Dave Cooper
Cover Artist(s): Dave Cooper
ISBN: 1-56097-615-2
48pp., full color, $22.95
UNDERBELLY: Additional observations on the beauty/ugliness of mostly pillowy girls
A few thousand comic book readers know Dave Cooper as the cartoonist behind such books Suckle and Danny & Larry. The Ottawan Cooper is also a much in demand painter of commissions, and he has spent the last few years working to have enough paintings for gallery shows. A follow-up to his first art book Overbite, UNDERBELLY is a collection of over 50 paintings of pillowy, chunky, fat, or (un)pleasantly plumb women.
Never has so much weirdness and oddity been so alluring. The bizarre subjects of Cooper’s canvases, with their maniacally superb teeth, as if they have access to alien dentistry, are sexy, but unapproachable. They are romp-in-the-sack worthy, but scary. Imagine that Grace Jones is a civilized outcast of their tribe.
Many of these works are oil paintings (there is some mixed media), and the luminous quality of the paintings shine through this tome’s stiff binding. Anyone who is already familiar with Cooper’s work recognize what I’m describing. Anyone who doesn’t will want to recognize. A
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