GARY COOK VPRI VPSGFA
“I always feel a deep connection and a sense of wellbeing when under the tree canopy. Being able to combine this joy with painting is such a privilege.”
GARY COOK VPRI VPSGFA
Gary lives and works in Dorset and has exhibited with the gallery since 2019. He is Vice President of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI), where he has been awarded The Frank Herring Easel Prize for outstanding work. He is also Vice President of the Society of Graphic Fine Art (SGFA) where he has twice been awarded Best in Show at their annual exhibitions and is an elected member of The Arborealists. He writes regularly for Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.
Gary graduated from Bournemouth in 1987 and was made a fellow of the university in 1999. He is an environmental painter who explores our complicated relationship with and often detrimental impact on nature.
The combination of naturalistic painting and narrative script that characterise his watercolours are a direct result of his background in the newspaper industry where he was an associate editor and the senior artist for The Sunday Times for 26 years, winning many international awards for his illustrations.
"Working for a newspaper, I often produced diagrams highlighting environmental problems. In the last decade as a painter, including an environmental message in each piece has been very important to me. For example, oak trees provide the habitat for around 2,300 different species from bats to beetles and lichens to mammals. The names and silhouettes of some of these species are discreetly included in my paintings. I always feel a deep connection and a sense of wellbeing when under the tree canopy. Being able to combine this joy with painting is such a privilege."