Limited works by the late Lawrence artist Louis Copt are for sale at a pop-up gallery, and smaller prints will be available at this month’s Final Friday event.
Phyllis Copt launched the pop-up gallery this month to share the last of her husband’s collection. It’s open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through Dec. 20 at the Lawrence Arts Center’s offsite gallery, 812 Massachusetts St.
“I am beyond words to express my gratitude to the Lawrence community for loving Louie and supporting his work and helping me share his work,” Phyllis said via email.
Phyllis said most original pieces are from Louis’s early career in the ’80s to the early 2000s. She said he became a full-time artist when he was around 30 — his only regret being that he didn’t do it sooner.
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In a line Phyllis shared from Louis’s 1991 journal, he wrote, “I want to make art until the very last minute.”
“He was at the top of his game at the end,” Phyllis said.
Louis died in May at age 76, leaving a legacy of creations that Phyllis said expressed the dreams he had, a lesson he learned or a problem he solved.
Widely known for his landscape paintings using oil, pastel, acrylic and watercolor, Louis was also a portraitist and muralist.
He completed a mural called “Kansas Symphony of Seasons” for the Lawrence Memorial Hospital rooftop garden renovation in 2023. Another, depicting a prairie fire at sunset, adorns the side of the Mass Street Music building at 1347 Massachusetts St.
According to Louis’s artist biography on Leopold Gallery and Art Consulting’s website, collectors of his art include the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, the Kansas City football team, H&R Block, Texas A&M, the Overland Park Convention Center and private collectors across the country. In 2011, Louis was named “Governor’s Artist” by the Kansas Arts Commission.
A few of his classic paintings of snowy Douglas County barns are still available, but no more of his original Kansas prairie fire paintings are left.
Phyllis will sell notecard-sized prints of one of Louis’s snowy barn pieces at the 812 Massachusetts St. gallery as part of the upcoming Final Friday event, which runs from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 28. There will also be a few prairie fire posters, classic watercolor prints and a few lithographs of the Grand Canyon, she said.
Louis had designed some posters for Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center and library cards for the Lawrence Public Library, which Phyllis also plans to sell. She said those proceeds will be donated to the respective organizations.
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Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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