Christopher Cook

About the Artist

Christopher Cook took his M.A. in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London. After three extended visits to India in the 90s, he developed a specific process in which graphite powder combined with resin is worked thinly on sheets of coated paper or aluminium, and he has not used colour since. The graphite works lie somewhere between painting and drawing, having a fluid and expressive beginning but a more detailed and drawn finish.

Cook has been a recipient of an Arts Council England fellowship at Eden Project Cornwall, a British School at Rome award, and has held Visiting Fellowships to Oxford University, the Frankfurt Stadelschule, and California State University, Long Beach. 

His major solo exhibitions include Camden Arts Centre Loon, Memphis Art Museum, USA, Towner Gallery Eastbourne, Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan and Heidelberger Kunstverein, Germany. He was awarded first prize in the 2017 New Light exhibition, and in October 2019, he won the Sunny Art prize, which will lead to a Shanghai residency and exhibition in 2020.

Cook’s work is held in major public collections including the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum New York, Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, Minneapolis Art Museum, and the Yale Center for British Art. He is currently Reader in Painting at Plymouth University, and is represented by Mary Ryan Gallery, New York.