Beryl Cook

Before taking up painting, Beryl Cook was employed in the secretarial field in an insurance office having left Kendrick School in Reading at fifteen. She eventually moved to Hampton from London where she got married to John Cook, who has been a Navy Officer in the Merchant Navy until 1956 and he also happened to be her neighbour. He later took up a job in Southern Rhodesia at a motor company.

Beryl first took an interest in painting while teaching her young son how to use a box of watercolours and when she revealed her desire to paint, her husband bought her a child’s watercolour set on her birthday. She set out to paint on her own creating a portrait of a coloured lady with sagging breasts showing a vacant expression on her face. This was named by Beryl’s husband as “Hangover” and they still have it hanged at their place.

Beryl’s family moved back to the UK in 1964, and eventually settled in Plymouth following a short stay at Cornwall. There they both ran a boarding house rented out for people on holidays by the seaside. Beryl continued to paint during all this time when ever she finds time and based her work on her surroundings and day to day observations.

Her work was first noticed by Bernard Samuels at the Plymouth Arts Centre who subsequently persuaded her to hold her first exhibition with her collection of 75 paintings. By then she had been painting and selling her work among friends for as little as £10 each. Her first exhibition proved to be a total success.

She went on to hold several more exhibitions at the Whitechapel and Portal Galleries in London and her work was reproduced in greeting cards, limited edition prints and her characters have bee featured on Royal Mail Stamps in the company of Rodin and Renoir. Her work was exhibited in the fifth prestigious Peter Moores exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool alongside the work of Bridges Riley and Victor Pasmore.
In 1995 she was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) by the Queen Elizabeth and being the modest and easy going person that she is, she lives a content life with her family in Bristol.