Oral Presentations - Beryl Cook

My Fur Coat
Dancing in the Bar
This was Tamsin Oldroyd's presentation from 10ºE. It was a very well structured speech about a Britsh artist and her work.

Beryl Cook

Beryl Cook was an English artist who specialized in comical paintings of people, capturing the unique British humor.

She was born on the 10th September 1926 and died this year, 28th May in the place she spent most of her life, Plymouth, in the South West England. Her career had spanned 40 years.

Painting wasn’t the first choice of career for Beryl. When she was younger she was a “showgirl”, then went to work in fashion, which inspired her life long interest in the way people dress and look.

It was only when she returned to England, after some time in South Rhodesia, now married and with a son that Beryl one day picked up her son's paint box and started painting on different textures including scraps of wood to even a breadboard.
She now lived in Plymouth, which is a port city, bustling with life and activity. During the summer months she ran a theatrical boarding house, enjoying the local bars and watching the “drag acts”. She concentrated on her painting in the winter, based on these observations and was eventually persuaded by an art dealer friend to let him try to sell her work. To her surprise they sold very quickly.

Later she held her first exhibition in Plymouth, which led onto her work appearing in prestigious magazines, papers and television appearances leading on to her fame.

It has to be said that not all galleries liked her work, but commercially she was very successful with the many prints, greeting cards (very popular with the British) and calendars, gaining lots of fans of her work, resulting in an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1995, a very high award given by the Queen, a recognition of her contribution to the art world.

Beryl was a slim, shy and private person, quite the opposite of the characters she painted. Her inspiration came from her observations in the bars, not only in England but from her travels to New York, Cuba, Paris, Buenos Aires and Barcelona. She was known to say that she was motivated to paint people enjoying themselves. The fact that her work made people smile brought her great satisfaction and contentment in her life.

I chose Beryl Cook for my presentation as she represents a different type of artist in comparison to the more traditional landscapes and “people” painters.
She was lucky to rise to fame and fortune in her own lifetime unlike so many other artists who only after they are dead receive any recognition.