LEMONSTREET GALLERY    24-26 City Quay, Dublin 2, +353 1 671 0244

Barrie Cooke

b 1931, Cheshire, England

He was born in England and spent part of his childhood in Bermuda and Jamaica before moving to the United States as a teenager where he later studied Art History at Harvard University. He moved to Ireland in 1954 and had his first solo exhibition in Dublin the following year. Though he has been based in Ireland ever since, he is widely travelled and his richly expressionist, semi–abstract paintings have been strongly influenced by time spent in such far-flung places as Lapland, New Zealand, Borneo and Malaya. He is a keen fisherman and naturalist and this is frequently reflected in his work, since nature in its infinite variety and irresistible flux is his chosen environment and subject matter.

He has collaborated with a number of prominent poets including Heaney and the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, both of whom share his fascination with the elemental. Though primarily a painter he also produced a series of 'bone boxes' in perspex during the 1970s.

He has exhibited widely throughout Europe, the US and Canada. Major retrospectives include shows in the Douglas Hyde Gallery in 1986, the Haags Gemeente museum, the Hague in 1992, and LAC, Perpignan, France in 1995. In 2003 a major retrospective exhibition took place at the Royal Hibernian Academy Gallery in Dublin.

His work is represented in the collections of IMMA, the Ulster Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Haags Gemeente museum, The Hague, Holland and in many other public and private collections worldwide.

Barrie Cooke lives and works in Ireland.