"Reedbeds" Painting

WORKS IN LONDON UK

ABSTRACT MINIMALIST PAINTER
SET and COSTUME designer


While attending art school in late 60’s and 70’s, a radical shift in contemporary art was taking place through the development of conceptual art. Cook attended workshops and lectures as well as performances with the following visiting artist in 1972-3 - Simone Forti accompanied byCharlemagne Palestine, performed pieces instruct d by Yvonne Rainer, attended lectures and workshops with film makers Michael Peter Kubelka, Michael Snow and Joyce Weiland, Robert Frank, conceptual composer created video art, performance art, learnt skills in lithography, photography, film making and studied the history of independent film making. Traditional materials and skills were replaced by systems, graph drawings, cinematic- montage, notation, movement, sound, and spacial performance, installation and video performance. In 1974 Cook moved to the U.K. and trained in theatre design, drawn to new writing and the disposable nature of ideas over time and the final 3D results rarely given refuge after its first public viewing. Cook worked extensively as a set and costume designer in theatre, ballet, opera and some film, for nearly four decades, as well as working ten years in collaboration with musicologist Nick Till, experimenting in the development of music/theatre. Throughout that time Cook has always maintained an independent art practise and studio in the U.K. with the emphasis on development of ideas and abstraction. Since the mid seventy's Cook's art work continued to develop using basic materials on paper, featuring automatic drawing and painting with no use of film or video technology or documentary tools. In the late eighties she began to paint monochromatic, minimalist work after a strenuous and persistent return to drawing, which continued into the late 1990's. Landscape of the body as well as nature of a disproportionate scale began to fuse and has continued to developed.
Since 2010 Cook made a decision to gradually transition from stage design and returned to painting without the cushion of script, music, scenario, libretto or dialogue, and has been painting full time since 2016.