Beryl Cook

Eleanor Beryl Cook OBE (born 10 September 1926 in Egham, Surrey; † 28 May 2008 Plymouth) was a British painter of naïve art, which was known for her strange portraits thicker people.

Life and work

Cook visited the Kendrick School in Reading. At the age of 14, she went off from school and worked in various professions. After moving to London in 1943 she became a dancer in a touring production of the operetta The Gypsy Princess. In 1946 she married her childhood friend John, who drove in the British Merchant Navy at sea. After the birth of his son John in 1950, the family moved in 1951 after Southern Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe). There, the self-taught artist Beryl Cook began to paint - first with colors of her son on everyday materials such as wooden boards or fireplace screens.

1963 returned the Cook returned to England and lived first in Cornwall. After another move, the couple operating in the port city of Plymouth in Devon, a boarding house where in the summer months especially perverse theater actor. In summer, the Cooks often visited the bars of Plymouth, in the winter months, Beryl Cook concentrated on painting and created under the influence of painting Stanley Spencer and Edward Burras according to their nearly photographic memory oil painting on wood, and their personal image of Plymouth the describe the local "scene". A fellow art dealer persuaded then to first painting to sell. Bernard Samuels of the Plymouth Art Centre became so aware of the " local phenomenon " Cook and was able to win in 1975 for an exhibition. This exhibition was a great success and made it to the front page of the Sunday Times Magazine. In 1976, an exhibition at London's Portal Gallery.

Cook's paintings were popular, not least by a naive comic, dark sides ausklammernde painting - Victoria Wood described it in 2006 as " Rubens with jokes " (Rubens with jokes ). The bright and extroverted personalities of the Plymouth nightlife, which represented Cook in her paintings, are presented in contrast to her personality described as introverted and shy.

When traveling to Buenos Aires, New York, Cuba, Paris and Barcelona, ​​Cook won new impressions which she had received as motifs in their art. In 1995 she was appointed as " Officer of the Order of the British Empire" ( OBE), 2002, her book The Royal Couple was inducted into the Golden Jubilee Exhibition of the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II. Two half-hour cartoons by Cook's paintings (produced by Tiger Aspect, aired on BBC in 2004 ) on women, who meet at the Dolphin pub in Plymouth, won several animation awards. 2006 hosted the Portal Gallery in London, a major retrospective of the artist 's 80th birthday, 2007 was another retrospective at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art to see in Gateshead.