Bath based British painter Celia Cook has work in private and public collections including a recent acquisition by Pallant House Gallery, which is currently on show in their ‘Pattern, Rhythm and Repetition’ exhibition. She is represented by Candida Stevens Gallery, Chichester.

In 2010 she was invited to work with Master Printmaker Jack Sherriff at 107 Workshop in Wiltshire. This first foray into the medium sparked an interest, predominantly wood block printing, which she says ‘has become addictive’.

She has an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 1989 and a BA Hons (First Class) in Fine Art from Ravensburne in 1986. She was Pirelli Scholar 1987-89, Visiting Fellow in Painting at the University of Southampton 1989/90 and awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2020.

In both paintings and prints Cook seeks to generate visualised rhythmic movement syncopated by colour.

Contemplating the basic elements of painting, namely form, colour, surface and space and with no preconceptions, she layers and excavates the surface of the canvas using a system of responsive experiment informed by geometry and symmetry. In a process both controlled and intuitive she seeks to engage improvised forms with each other and the canvas edges to create dynamic relationships in continual flux, like visual gymnastics. All is entirely invented, not abstracted from something real or alluding to a specific emotion or event. These forms are never the less vital and exuberant as they tumble and collide within the force field of the canvas. The titles of the paintings are invented, evocative words that give identity without suggesting meaning.