Fred coppin
Coppin is a contemporary British painter based on the South Coast of England, whose oil-based works radiate an infectious sense of optimism. Through bold colour palettes, playful forms, and layered symbolism, his art invites us to see the world not just as it is but as it could be. Bridging nostalgia with the now, and tradition with tech-era aesthetics, Coppin's work is a joyful reimagining of the everyday.
Painting primarily in oils, Coppin uses colour not just as a visual tool, but as a mood-setter, a feeling-generator, and an emotional anchor. His canvases pulse with warmth and wonder, shaped by a desire to amplify the world’s lighter notes to elevate small joys into grand moments. At the heart of his practice is a quiet but powerful mission: to reconstruct reality into its most hopeful form.
Each painting feels like a dream that’s just on the cusp of recognition where familiar icons and settings are stretched, reassembled, and presented anew. There’s a tension between figuration and fantasy, where everyday scenes are lovingly disrupted by glitches, surreal geometries, and chromatic play. The result is a body of work that sits in a beautiful flux: between the real and the imagined, the analogue and the digital.
Though grounded in representational painting, Coppin's practice nods to the lineage of great British painters, drawing inspiration from figures such as David Hockney and Patrick Caulfield. But what makes his work distinctively contemporary is the subtle infusion of digital-era aesthetics. There’s a modern rhythm to the way shapes intersect, how shadows pixelate, and how pastel tones soften architectural structures. His visual language is both painterly and pixel-aware offering a bridge between brush and screen.
Beyond the visual, Coppin’s work speaks to a state of mind a desire to make space for beauty, levity, and open-ended meaning. His scenes are never static; they exist in a state of becoming. Whether it’s a coastline reimagined in peach tones or a domestic interior glitched by geometry, his paintings ask viewers to pause, smile, and maybe even believe again in something softer.
While the world leans toward urgency and overstimulation, Coppin’s practice offers a counterpoint: a return to contemplation, to colour, to the idea that visual art can uplift without oversimplifying. His work doesn’t shy away from complexity, but it retools it turning disarray into delight, and layering melancholy with magic.
As he continues to develop his practice, Coppin is fast becoming known for his unique ability to capture joy in flux to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary through colour, perspective, and painterly curiosity. In doing so, he gives viewers a gift: a lens through which the world feels a little lighter, a little brighter, and infinitely more possible.
Creative Debuts have commissioned and showcased Fred in many projects. Including Disney, and here as part of his first solo show, ‘Angles & Optimism’.
