GALLERY

JUSTIN COOKE

Justin Cooke was born in Portsmouth in 1966 and moved to Dorset soon after.

He studied for his BA (hons) in Fine Art at Newcastle University where Norman Adams RA was professor and head of department. It was Norman who introduced Justin to mixed media and, more rarely at the time, championed watercolour as a Mixed Media even in large scale paintings.

When Justin completed his studies in 1988 he began to work solely as an artist and has been doing so ever since. He now exhibits throughout the UK and abroad, taking part in such shows as the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London, Heatherslow Gallery, Northumberland, Richmond Gallery, London, Galerie Internacionale de Arte, Portugal, and Galleriet, Sweden. He is also a regular participant in Dorset Art Weeks and has had solo exhibitions in Queen Mary College, London and the Allsop Gallery, Bridport.

He lives and works in Dorset close to where he grew up. The landscape around him is a recurrent theme in his paintings, particularly the South Dorset Ridgeway and the coast. Like many artists before him he has also adopted Cornwall as another source of inspiration.

Justin's paintings are typically painted in mixed media, specifically watercolour and pastel. Layers of colour are built up creating a distinctive texture and combining of colours. Using source material in the form of sketches, photographs, even video, Justin paints in his studio and also continually revisits a subject and gets to know it well, in all seasons and all weathers.

In some paintings the theme becomes simplified to just sky, and landscape beneath, with the colours and drawing bringing the painting closer to abstraction. It is often a low evening light or an unusual sky that is the initial trigger to paint, or more often than not, a fleeting moment that catches the eye.

Justin says of his work:

"These are paintings that I really enjoy painting because they bring me close to the landscape where I live. Some elements of these paintings will be familiar to people who know this area but it is the overall feel of what I have seen which I hope to convey."

In 2004 Justin began a series of paintings of fields of the South Dorset Ridgeway. In 2005 he continued working with this theme and 'Ridgeway Field' one of the first of this series of work was exhibited at the Royal West of England Academy where it received the Friends Award.