Bath based British painter Celia Cook received 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 Visiting Fellow in Painting at the University of Southampton 1989/90 and awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2020.

Cook's paintings and prints generate visualised rhythmic movement inviting you to consider how to conjour something from nothing. Beginning with no preconceived idea of what the finished image will look like 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 - however, because they hover between dimensionality and flatness they dissolve under scrutiny. The titles of the paintings are invented, evocative words that give identity without suggesting meaning.