Cooking Article

Beryl Cook is one of Britain's most talented and amusing artists .Beryl's pictures feature women of all shapes and sizes enjoying themselves .Born between the two world wars
Beryl Cook eventually left Kendrick School in Reading at the age of 15
where she went to secretarial school and then into an insurance office. After moving to London and then Hampton
she eventually married her next door neighbour from Reading
John Cook. He was an officer in the Merchant Navy and after he left the sea in 1956
they bought a pub for a year before John took a job in Southern Rhodesia with a motor company. Beryl bought their young son a box of watercolours
and when showing him how to use it
she decided that she herself quite enjoyed painting. John subsequently bought her a child's painting set for her birthday and it was with this that she produced her first significant work
a half-length portrait of a dark-skinned lady with a vacant expression and large drooping breasts. It was aptly named 'Hangover' by Beryl's husband and still hangs in their house today.

In 1964 Beryl Cook and her husband returned to the UK settling first in Cornwall and then later in Plymouth where
during the summer months
Beryl ran a boarding house for holidaymakers on the seafront. Beryl had now been painting for a number of years
basing her pictures on her everyday observations of people around her. By 1975 she had amassed numerous paintings that covered the walls of their boarding house. A friend took away a dozen or so and
to Beryl's surprise
managed to sell them all for around ฃ10 each. Beryl was delighted and quickly increased her production. Her success came to the attention of Bernard Samuels at the Plymouth Arts Centre who persuaded her to mount her first exhibition featuring 75 paintings. It was a sell out. The rest
as they say
is history.

An article quickly appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine
followed by exhibitions at the Whitechapel and Portal Galleries in London. Her first book 'The Works' was published in 1978. Her paintings were then reproduced as greeting cards and limited edition prints and soon her work was being featured around the world
tickling ribs from Kingston to the Cape
and generating considerable popular acclaim.

This popular acclaim has been accompanied by serious critical appreciation
most notably with the inclusion of her painting in the fifth Peter Moores exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool where she was seen in the context of mainstream contemporary art
alongside Bridges Riley and Victor Passmore. The new Glasgow Museum of Modern Art has also recently purchased some of her original work
ensuring her a place in the annuls of British Art. Beryl Cook continues to paint and has recently moved from Plymouth to Bristol
to be near her family"