Judy Cooke | Conversations: Aluminum, Oil, Rubber

September 6 - October 27, 2018

First Thursday Reception: September 6, 6 - 8pm
Artist Talk: October 6, 11am

One of the Northwest's most influential painters, Judy Cooke has explored abstract imagery and the structure of painting for over 30 years. The results of Cooke’s experimentation is work that hovers at the intersection of painting and sculpture, where she often engages with formalism, color field and materiality. 

In her new body of work entitled Conversation: Aluminum, Oil, Rubber, Cooke continues her fascination with materials by embracing rubber and aluminum as the medium upon which she subtly sculpts or paints. The result is a richness of texture, form and color with mark making as a prominent element.  Other influences seen throughout Cooke’s work are references to literature, history and art history. Cooke’s work Tablet conjures a writing pad with lines of horizontally irregularly stacked squares, invoking the cut-out and rearranged visual style of Dadaist poetry.  

Often working on multiple paintings at once, Cooke’s studio practice is a contemplative “call and response” of shifting visual conversations. She illuminates surface and materiality through re-contextualization, re-evaluation, additions and subtractions to her surfaces. Her restrained palette highlights materiality and mark making, while vibrant pops of color add unexpected surprise.

Judy Cooke majored in printmaking at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She received her BFA at Tufts University (Medford, MA) and a MAT at Reed College (Portland, OR). She has exhibited extensively, including a retrospective at the Art Gym, Marylhurst University (Lake Oswego, OR), and exhibitions at Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), and Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA). She has been the recipient of numerous prestigious grants, including the Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Art (Pasadena, CA), Regional Arts & Culture Council Visual Artist Fellowship Grant (Portland, OR), Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship in Painting (Salem, OR) and the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship. Her work is included in the collections of the Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), and Boise Art Museum (Boise, ID), among many others. Cooke has been represented by the Elizabeth Leach Gallery since 1983.