The Artist

 


Bio

April Cooper, known professionally as Art by April, is a New Jersey based artist whose practice centers Black life, community, and cultural memory. Working primarily in oil, her paintings document intimate social scenes gatherings, celebrations, and moments of quiet connection preserving experiences that are often fleeting yet foundational.

This body of work marks a shift toward painting Black social environments as living systems. Rather than spectacle, April focuses on presence: how people occupy space, care for one another, and create meaning together. These scenes function as visual records of everyday Black joy, tenderness, and belonging offering a counter-narrative to histories of misrepresentation and erasure.

Rooted in April’s lived experience with agoraphobia and severe social anxiety, this practice is also deeply personal. Painting social spaces allows her to observe, process, and re-enter environments that once felt inaccessible. The act of documenting community becomes both therapeutic and transformative an intentional slowing down, a way to rebuild trust with shared space and human connection.

Conceptually, the work engages eco-social ideas by treating community as an ecosystem. The paintings explore how social gatherings operate as sustaining systems spaces where care, resilience, and cultural continuity are exchanged. By honoring these moments, April’s work highlights social sustainability and the environmental importance of connection, reciprocity, and collective presence.

Through this practice, April seeks to expand how Black life is seen: not as exceptional or explanatory, but as full, complex, and deeply human.


Artist Statement 

My work is a celebration of Black culture, the moments, traditions, and symbols that shape our collective identity. Through oil painting, I capture the beauty in everyday life: a table full of family at a cookout, the confident tilt of a head framed by bamboo earrings, the laughter that spills from a late-night card game. These are the scenes that deserve to be preserved, celebrated, and passed down as cultural heirlooms.

I am deeply inspired by the ways our community transforms adversity into art, style, and joy. My ongoing series, Ghetto to Trendy, reclaims elements once dismissed or ridiculed hair styles, clothing, music, and rituals and reframes them as symbols of pride.

My process is layered, beginning with an underpainting where I wipe away oil to reveal highlights, working almost in reverse. This approach mirrors the way I see my art’s purpose: revealing light and truth in stories that have been overlooked or misunderstood.

At its core, my work is an act of preservation. I paint so that future generations will not just know our stories they will feel them.

Artist CV

Exhibition History & Awards

2026

  • Princeton University & MCCC’s Trenton Artist Fellow Finalist

  • Group Exhibition, Celebration of 100 Years of Black History Month, Office of Assemblywoman Tennille McCoy, Trenton, NJ, 2026

  • Her Canvas Her Voice, Urban Art Gallery’s Annual Women’s History Month exhibition Curated by Forbidden Fruit, Philadelphia

2025

  • Gallery 14C - “Under The Influence” Jersey City, New Jersey

  • “Food Story” International Juried Art Show

  • Artworks - “Art All Day”, Trenton, New Jersey

  • New Jersey State Museum- “Art All Day” - Trenton, New Jersey

  • Passage Theatre “Fine Arts Ripper”Trenton, New Jersey

  • Moja Life – “Up in Smoke”, New Jersey

  • Artwork’s Art All Night, Trenton, NJ

  • ArtFair 14C – 6th Edition, Jersey City, NJ

  • Slamming Brew Art Cafe, Trenton, NJ

  • The Lobby Club – “Spring Bling Show”, Trenton, NJ

2024

New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship

  • La Galerie Adrienne, Trenton, NJ

  • Passage Theatre – “Fine Arts Ripper”, Trenton, NJ

  • Slamming Brew – “Spring Show”, Trenton, NJ

  • Art All Night, Trenton War Memorial, Trenton, NJ

  • Art in the Atrium, Morristown, NJ

  • Mill Hill Collective – “Cinco de Buck”, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Collective – “Love is Love”, Trenton, NJ

2023

  • Artworks Gallery – Members Show, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Collective – “Trick or Treat”, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Collective – “Cinco De Mayo”, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Collective – “Return of the Mack”, Trenton, NJ

  • Artworks – “A Stolen Aesthetic” Solo Show, Trenton, NJ

  • Exit 7A – 420 Art Show, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Saloon – “Love is Love”, Trenton, NJ

  • Expo 42 – International Juried Show, New Jersey

  • Museum of Science and Industry – Black Creativity, Chicago, IL

2022

  • Ellarslie Museum – “This is Trenton”, Trenton, NJ

  • MCCC Group Show, West Windsor, NJ

  • Hub 13 – Community Show, Trenton, NJ

  • Art All Day, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Collective – “King of the Hill”, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Collective – “A Whole Notha Level”, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Collective – “Spring Bling”, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Collective – “Fine Arts Ripper”, Trenton, NJ

  • Starbucks – Solo Show, Trenton, NJ

2021

  • Artworks – 10x10 Show, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Saloon – “Krampus”, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Saloon – “The Wonder Years”, Trenton, NJ

  • Mill Hill Saloon – “Ripper Show”, Trenton, NJ

2020

  • Art All Night – Virtual Show, Trenton, NJ

2019

  • Art All Night, Trenton, NJ

  • Urban Art Gallery – Caribbean Show, Philadelphia, PA

2018

  • Art All Night Selects Show – Artworks, Trenton, NJ

  • Art All Night, Trenton, NJ

  • Urban Art Gallery – Caribbean Show, Philadelphia, PA

2017

  • Art All Night Selects Show – Artworks, Trenton, NJ

  • Art All Night, Trenton, NJ

2016

  • Art All Night Selects Show – Artworks, Trenton, NJ

  • Art All Night, Trenton, NJ