Michael Cooper was best known as an artist, while also being a community activist. His interest in art was prompted as a child, aged five or six when he saw a picture of Tobias and the Angel on a visit to the doctor’s surgery. He left school and began to paint aged 14 and had a 68-year career in the art world with a love for all things ‘art’.

He worked initially helping his uncle in the jewellery trade in Birmingham. When his family moved down to Brighton, he worked closely with the colourfully named hell-raiser St John James Drinkwater Earp, a Surrealist painter and picture restorer. He used his newly developed skills restoring oil paintings under the wing of well-known art dealer, Bertie Boast, mustering a wide range of techniques. He was totally self-taught, he never went to art school.

A memorable moment of his restoration work was accidentally damaging a Walter Sickert painting, ‘The Brighton Pierrots’, which he thankfully managed to repair and which was later shown in the Tate Gallery.

His paintings started with pot-boilers’ – Victorian scenes painted on wooden panels, such as foxhunting, horse racing, stagecoaches and agricultural vistas. These were followed by abstracts, figures, still-life, sketches, cartoons, historical subjects, religious icons, portraits, local scenes, foreign observations and landscapes followed.

He contributed to many shows including The Royal Academy, Ingo Finke Gallery, The Marlborough and the Chris Beetles Gallery. As his reputation as an artist grew, he was elected as a member of the prestigious New England Art Club (NEAC). In 2025 his first painting to join a public collection, Leaving, was acquired by the Towner Eastbourne, Art Fund Gallery of the Year 2020.

Julian Bell said of Mike: ‘He was a unique master of powdery mists and low, subtle bendings from one tone to another, and of intuitive, inexorable editing decisions as a fabulous versatility draughtsman. For me the completely non-figurative pieces are the centre of his retrospective. But the paintings are equally lovely when he leans on the simple archetypal imagery of the female nude, or pays homages to local landscapes, or thinks prayerfully. There is so much inspiration, for us painters, to be got from returning to his stuff. All of us who knew him are forever grateful’.

Peter Messer, fellow artist, said ‘Mike was, in many ways, a painter’s painter. Although his work was widely loved and respected, it was always fellow artists at his shows who seemed to pay the closest attention. I think we all marveled at his subtle, close tones and colours, the surprising resonances and his elegant, restrained drawing’.

Not only a gifted artist, Michael also entered the creative life of Lewes. His initial contribution, in collaboration with his wife Pat and Lewes friends, came when they campaigned to save the old Candle Factory and later the Needlemakers buildings from demolition in 1976. These now flourish with a range of shops and eateries. Next in 1985 Michael and Pat led a group of local artists and craftspeople to save the Star Brewery from demolition. Four years later they had created the magnificent gallery and art and craft spaces that are now a Lewes landmark.

As Tony Penrose of Farleys Farm said: ‘I first met him not long after The Star Gallery had opened and I was immediately struck by the generosity of spirit of this man who toiled so valiantly to create this exemplary gallery. At that point Lewes did not have a gallery for contemporary art, and he had recognised one was needed. We collaborated on a couple of shows, including one with some photographs by Lee Miller. Other exhibitions included world famous names such as Andy Warhol, Sir Hugh Casson, Henry Moore and Paula Rego. Openings and events at the Star always had that friendly generosity that was Michael. His legacy is shown by the success of The Star Gallery and the subsequent emergence of other gallery spaces in the town’.

The retrospective exhibition of Michael’s artwork as well as photos and drawings of the restoration of the Star Brewery, appeared at the Star Brewery Gallery, Castle Ditch Lane, from 6-14 December 2025. 

Richard Pearson