Page 50 - Studio International - December 1970

Barrie Cook

in conversation with

Terry Measham

The contrasts which surround the creation of `Until my show at Camden Arts Centre last the work I am immediately involved with.
Barrie Cook's paintings go some way towards year, nobody wanted to show me. I'd had a I recognise that the best of my work works on
explaining their unique character and the number of shows of course, but they were a language level, but this is not necessarily the
peculiarities of his painter personality. He has mainly in the provinces. I think that up until work that most interests me. It's the other
been working for years in an agricultural loft that time only the ICA had given me stuff, the other part of me that I'm really
in rural Worcestershire. The paintings are representation in a four-man group show in interested in. There are public paintings and
very big and unexpectedly clean—clinically Dover Street. That was in the summer of... those that have moments that are certainly
so; the only point of contact between them about 1965 or '66, and it didn't attract very not public. These are the ones—the inner
and their stuffy environment is the light they much attention. Which was a bit sad really. image paintings—that make far less appeal to
record. The grimy panes of the loft-windows Although on reflection, the paintings were other people although I think I'm attempting
admit a soft, dappled grey light that is con- not very good. Weren't all that interesting. to communicate more in them. I'm not talking
sistently reflected in all the paintings from But it's the same old story; if you are working about an ingredient consciously injected into
early small-scale works, complex and over- in the provinces you don't attract the atten- them but of something beyond conscious con-
contrived, to the generous and expansive tion of the critics. I mean, I had a large—by trol. You can take a format and repeat it
statements of recent times. London standards very large—one-man show identically in a series of paintings and each
With his spray-gun, Cook treats radical at the Herbert Gallery, Coventry. But nobody one will be different, governed by the mood
themes with a technique that is sometimes came up to look at it or anything like that. in which you painted it.
traditional, sometimes even historicist, such This is not necessarily a criticism, it's just a `The technique is important. The sympathy
as the way he plays with perceptual responses fact of life. After the Camden show, a number and excitement with the spray-gun is very
by using lines, edges that register with the of people showed interest, came up to the different from the tactile application involved
spectator but which are physically insub- studio. I've been around for a very long time in using a brush, where the nerves in the arm
stantial or non-existent. The main effect of and other painters knew of my work, what I are educated to feel the way you are putting
Cook's paintings is to induce in the spectator a was doing, like exhibiting through John the paint on. The spray-gun has a built-in
trance-like contemplative state. He combines Moores and that sort of show. In a way, it is source of wonder because you are not touching
many devices to achieve this. First, surfaces reasonable that I wasn't taken up as a younger the canvas when you are using the tool. You
are in soft focus; across them he drums out a person anyhow. It is fair to say that the are both removed from the surface by a foot
rhythm in whites overlaying vertical corruga- Camden paintings were a big improvement or two and there is a tremendous amount of
tions. (The music analogy is deliberate.) With on what I had been doing before, though not surprise to be had with what is happening. It
a little softening treatment and with the addi- a sudden one. Not a sudden one, because for really is fascinating—it is a very positive tool—
tion of dragged shadows, the whites become me there is a consistent and logical develop- you can make or break a painting within half
lights and we are in the realm of visual illu- ment in my work which has improved all the a second. You see, it's all about doing it more
sion; the illusion reinforces the softening effect time. I consider myself a slow developer—of than anything else. Being there and doing it —
of the whites and makes them soothing. They necessity. That particular work which was on that's the excitement, that's where I get my
evoke memories of woodland paths and dusky, at the Camden Arts Centre actually all came kicks.
relaxed interiors. Now that the spectator is together in the last two months immediately `The notion of space that I use is one which I
on the edge of a trance, Cook confuses him beforehand, which is the way I like to exhibit. see in an historical sense. I use perspective
with an arrangement of unstable gestalts. q I only like to exhibit current work. That is, space, atmospheric space, Malevich and