Jean Cooke: Seascapes & Chalk Caves

When painting in Sussex, Jean Cooke wrapped herself in the forces of nature. Her pictures of beach, cliff and sea were made over a forty-year period from 1965 until her death, and each one shows her awareness of ‘the wind always blowing, the light changing, the tide going in or out’. In her remarkable ‘cave paintings’ she used imagery suggestive of the female body, transforming a chalk hollow into a womb-like enclosure. Cooke often worked outdoors, and her spontaneous mark-making was inspired by an intense first-hand experience of the subject. Piano Nobile's exhibition Jean Cooke: Seascapes & Chalk Caves brought together pictures of beach, coast and sea by Cooke selected from a period between 1963 and 2008.

Cooke once said: ‘In order to paint I have to get away from distractions, and also get away from an awareness of myself’. The Sussex coast helped to induce that state of creativity. As a child Cooke was evacuated to the village of East Dean during the Second World War. She began making regular visits to nearby Birling Gap in the mid-sixties, renting a cliff-top toehold – 1 Crangon Cottages – that became a retreat from her home in London. On this beautiful outcrop, endangered by coastal erosion, Cooke positioned herself at the meeting point of sea, sky, and the famous chalk cliffs at Seven Sisters and Beachy Head. As erosion brought the cliff edge ever closer, demolition became necessary in 1995. Cooke responded by acquiring the neighbouring cottage: ‘that will see me out’, she said.

The exhibition was accompanied by a significant publication about Jean Cooke and her connection with East Sussex. It includes the first comprehensive chronology of the artist and an essay by Jane Alison, former Head of Visual Arts at the Barbican, which considers Cooke's work in the context of eco-feminism. Rarely seen photographs of Cooke and the artist's own photographs of Sussex were also published for the first time.

Piano Nobile represents the Estate of Jean Cooke.