Girls' Night Out
ARTIST BERYL COOK, KNOWN FOR HER POPULAR PAINTINGS OF LARGE WOMEN, PROSTITUTES AND SAILORS, HAS DIED.
Cook, 81, died peacefully yesterday with her husband and son by her side.
A former seaside landlady who taught herself to paint in her forties, Cook became one of Britain's best known and most distinctive painters.
But critical acclaim largely eluded her idiosyncratic portrayals of port life in Plymouth and she was snubbed by most of the major galleries for much of her career.
She is best known for creating a colourful and comical world of oversized women, drag acts and strippers.
The comedian Victoria Wood once described her as "Rubens with jokes".
Describing her own work she once said: "I don't know how my pictures happen, they just do."
Her fans have long accused the major art galleries of ignoring her works, which sell for up to £40,000.
In 2007 they launched a campaign against Tate Modern for not buying a single Cook painting while spending thousands of pounds on a can of conceptual human excrement.
But towards the end of her life she enjoyed wider appreciation, with a major exhibition last year at the Baltic gallery in Gateshead.
Jess Wilder, co-owner of London's Portal Gallery, which has shown her paintings for more than 30 years, said: "It's very sad indeed. She was painting until very recently."
Beryl Cook painted plump people in everyday situations
(Telegraph)
You can see more of her work on an audio slideshow at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7424366.stm
"At least ordinariness in Cook's art is more various than one might think: the bloke next door is a shoe fetishist, and even Saga members like a bit of kinky sex.
All the girls, and some of the boys, like a sailor. Cook's is an art without any pretentions other than to please."
(The Guardian)
