Judy Cooke | Form First | Viewing Room
Judy Cooke, Present Danger, 2021, oil and wax on wood, 12.75 x 12.25 x 2"
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Judy Cooke, Staircase, 2021, wood, oil, wax, 64 x 8 x 2”
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Looking for Form:
Expanding Beyond the Sketchbook
Image taken during a studio visit with Cooke
Judy Cooke’s exhibition, Form First, highlights the artist’s exploration of shape and dimensionality through new minimalist wall constructions.
Cooke’s artworks merge painting and sculpture with additions of bright color and dynamic lines that encourage the viewer’s eye to move in all directions. In the vertical artwork, Staircase, 2021, brilliant orange shapes read like a statistical scale with marks that intermittently climb and fall. Cooke’s recent works appear like geometries within geometries. As they engage and reflect the space around them, the works subtly communicate ideas of containment and expansion.
“Always insisting upon the painting as a physical object in a dialogue with the space it occupies, she creates works that are sculpture as much as they are supports for painting.”
Judy Cooke, Sled, 2020-2021, oil, pencil, and wax on wood, 10.5 x 96.25 x 2"
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Spatial relationships are central concerns to the artist, and precise considerations inform the physicality of her artworks. Extending only two inches from the wall, these wood and aluminum shapes cast distinct shadows while painted edges reiterate their “objectness” and formal presence.
Judy Cooke, Zoot, 2021, oil, pencil, wax and aluminum on wood, 28.5 x 19.5 x 1”
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Watch Judy Cooke discuss her studio practice
“some of them…come together as several shapes that have something in common and that I want to think about. But I always keep concrete things around me when I’m painting…”
ABOVE: Materials and images from Cooke’s studio. Images provided by artist.
Judy Cooke, Tilt, 2021, oil and rubber on aluminum, 24.75 x 20.25"
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“Literature…has always been very much part of what I’m doing...Poetry and novels…it’s just part of how I work”
Judy Cooke, Pink, 2021, oil and wax on wood, 12.75 x 12.25 x 2”
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Inspirational Thoughts:
The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —
The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —
The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —
–Emily Dickinson
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life.
–Ludwig Wittgenstein
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Judy Cooke has been exploring abstract imagery and the structure of painting for over 40 years. With a strong understanding of and connection to the genres of geometric abstraction and abstract expressionism, Cooke explores the space between paintings and sculpture, examining the physical nature of the work. 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 at Marylhurst University (Marylhurst, 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.
Watch the exhibition tour with Curator Bruce Guenther and Gallery Director Daniel Peabody
