Beryl Cook

Born Beryl Francis Lansley in 1926 in Surrey, England. One of four sisters, she left school at fourteen and worked in the fashion industry, which inspired her life-long interest in the way people dress and how they look.

In 1943 Cook moved to London and became a showgirl in a touring production of The Gypsy Princess. She went on to marry John Cook and lived in Southern Rhodesia and later Zambia during the 1960s. It was here that Cook first began to paint, attempting the figurative style of Stanley Spencer. When Beryl was 40, she took up painting seriously. In 1975 had her first exhibition at the Plymouth Arts Centre. Within a few years, she was well known through exhibitions, television appearances, and the publication of the first of several collections of her work in book form.

Today, her works are held in the collections of the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, the Bristol City Museum of Art Gallery, and the Plymouth City Art Gallery, among others. The artist has received retrospective exhibitions at the Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2007); Plymouth City Art Gallery, Plymouth (2017); and A.H.F.T.A.W, New York (2022).

Courtesy of Studio Voltaire