Beryl Cook

Beryl Cook, british artist, self taught painter died earlier this year (2008) aged 81

ART SUNDAY, DARK ART

Art Sunday; Dark Art,

Today I have chosen Beryl Cook. I know she is a very unlikely choice for ‘Dark Art’, her paintings are the most innocent and iniquitous you could possibly wish to find. When I saw the theme for today I did a mental check list of all the obvious candidates, Goya, William Hogarth, Hieronymus Bosch, William Blake, I thought about them all. Then I thought that rather than ‘do’ one who is known for producing rather ‘Dark Art’, I would do the one artist who really does unsettle me. Now don’t ask me why this womans art should make me feel so uncomfortable, I have no idea why it makes me feel the way it does……………..It just does, to me this is the ultimate in creepy stuff on canvas!!

World famous British artist Beryl Cook OBE, died earlier this year aged 81. The artist shot to fame in 1979 after a Southbank Show special about her and her unique style of drawing and painting.

She painted ordinary every day events from the clubs and pubs in and around her home town of Plymouth with her jolly portraits of hefty and sometimes naked people at their leisure. In 2004 her characters were animated for a 2 part BBC special, and in 2006 the Portal Gallery in London hosted an 80Th birthday exhibition showcasing some of her most famous work. In 1995 she was presented with an OBE (Order Of The British Empire), and in 2002 was asked to help celebrate the Queens Jubilee by producing 'The Royal Couple'. To moarn the loss of a great artist, Plymouth University will be hosting a retrospective exhibition in November 2008. Whenshe died she passed away peacefully at home surrounded by family. Beryl Cook, 1926 – 2008.

Her paintings sold for $60,000 and over. Jess Wilder, co-owner of London's Portal Gallery, said her record price was $80,000 for Strip Poker, a study of two women and two men in varied stages of undress. In an interview with the International Herald Tribune in 1980, Ms. Cook said she learned to draw from cartoons and was influenced by James Thurber's haphazard style. Her work was spotted at a local exhibition in Plymouth in 1975, and her reputation boomed when one of her images appeared in the Sunday Times the following year.

She is quoted as saying ‘I DON’T KNOW HOW MY PICTURES HAPPEN, THEY JUST DO. THEY EXIST, BUT FOR THE LIFE OF ME I CAN’T EXPLAIN THEM’. Born in 1926 in Surrey, England and one of four sisters, she left school when she was only fourteen at the time, showing little talent for painting and drawing.  Beryl became a showgirl in 1943 after moving to London and joined a touring production of ‘The Gypsy Princess’. She also worked in the fashion industry, which inspired her life-long interest in the way people dress and how they look.

In 1946 Beryl married her childhood friend John, who was in the Merchant Navy. When he retired from the sea they briefly ran a pub. Their son John was born in 1950, and the following year they left to live in Southern Rhodesia.

 

This move was to prove a turning point for Beryl. One day she picked up some paints belonging to her son and started a picture. She enjoyed it so much she could not stop. She painted on any surface she could find, scraps of wood, fire screens and most notably a breadboard, as can be seen from her famous early painting of Bowling Ladies.

 

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