About Beryl Cook
Beryl Cook, OBE (1926 – 2008) was a British artist, known for her comical and original paintings which pictures people in their everyday life. Often pictures of people in pubs, out shopping, sporting scenes, or on nights out.
She had no formal training and only took up painting when she was in her thirties.
Beryl Cook took inspiration from the artist Stanley Spencer, which you can recognise in her compositions and bulky figures.
She also admired Edward Burra, who painted cafés scenes and nightclubs.
In the mid-seventies, Cook spent her time between painting and running her family’s guest house in Plymouth. The guests started to notice her work and put her in touch with the management of the Plymouth Arts Centre, where her first exhibition took place in November 1975.
This then resulted in a cover feature in The Sunday Times, which was followed by an exhibition at the Portal Gallery in London in 1976, where Cook continued to exhibit regularly until her death.
Cook also illustrated many books which then lead her to publish her own books of her artworks up into the early 2000s.
In 1994, she received the Best Selling Published Artist Award from the Fine Art Trade Guild. In 1995, Beryl Cook was also awarded the Order of the British Empire.
The Royal Mail reproduced one of her paintings as a first class postage stamp. In 2002, her painting The Royal Couple featured in the Golden Jubilee exhibition in London.
In 2010, two of her paintings were used as part of the Rude Britannia exhibition at the Tate Britain. Beryl Cook’s paintings have been acquired by the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, Plymouth Art Gallery and Durham Museum.
