“My work is more choreographed than planned because there is a sequence of marks that interact to portray the subject. When I pick up a brush or a trowel and lay down a line, the tool plows up paint and changes the mixture of color. I have to choreograph that interaction between one layer of detail and another. It always takes me somewhere I don’t expect.” – James Pringle Cook
BORN: Topeka, Kansas, 1947
About the Artist
James Cook is a painter who is in love with painting, with the feel of paint, with its smell, with its application, with its color, with its movement on the canvas. He paints quickly creating richly colored and exciting surfaces. Indeed, his bravura use of paint is akin to the Abstract Expressionists; unlike them, however, he provides the viewer with a recognizable reality, ordered by his own personal vision and controlled by his technical mastery. In subject matter and the interpretation of that subject, Cook’s is an American vision which owes much to tradition, but it is tradition that is, in the artist’s hands, fully redefined taking on a new, personal, but very important meaning.
The paintings are a consummate demonstration of years of hard work, of looking at and, literally, inhaling the landscape and rendering it in a sure and dramatic way. These are the paintings of an artist totally in control of his medium and totally sure of what he does. In them he achieves that elusive goal for which all artists strive: he realizes his personal artistic vision in dramatic and uncompromising terms when he presents that vision to us and we comprehend its meaning and intent.
Since 1982, James Cook exhibited in over 40 solo exhibitions, and since 1980, he exhibited in over 100 group exhibitions.
Boise Art Museum, Idaho (photo above)
Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana
Des Moines Art Center, Iowa
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona
Emporia State University, Emporia, KS
Rahr-West Museum, Wisconsin
Arizona State University Museum of Art, Tempe
Indiana University Museum of Art, Bloomington
University of Minnesota Museum of Art
University of Utah Museum of Art, Salt Lake City
South Dakota Museum of Fine Arts, SD
New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe
Museum of Contemporary Art, Osaka, Japan
Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson
Illinois State Museum, Springfield
State University at Albany Museum of Art, New York
University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson
Yuma Art Center, Yuma, Arizona
The Ackland Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin
Princeton University Collection, Princeton, New Jersey
Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado
White Mountain Cascade #4
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:
Allied Bank of Texas, Houston
A.T.&T., New York, New York
The Bank of New York, New York, New York
Canadian Petroleum Collection, Calgary, Alberta
Cargill Incorporated, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Chemical Bank, New York, New York
Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio
Continental Illinois National Bank, Chicago
E.F. Hutton, New York, New York
Emporia State University, Kansas
Ernst & Whinney, New York, New York
First Bank of Evanston, Illinois
F.M.C. Corporation, Chicago, Il.
IBM, Stuttgart, Germany
The Kemper Group, Chicago, Il.
LaSalle National Bank, Chicago, Il.
Lehman Brothers, New York
Marsh, McClellan, New York, New York
Mutual of New York, New York, New York
Northern Trust Company, Chicago, Il.
NYNEX, New York, New York
Otis Elevator Company, Connecticut
Owens – Illinois, Toledo, OH
Pacific Enterprises Oil Company of Dallas, Texas
Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison, New York, New York
Piper, Jaffray & Hopwood, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota
The Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, New Jersey
Quarles & Brady Law Firm, Tucson, Arizona
Regions Bank, NYC
The St. Paul Companies, St. Paul, Minnesota
Sears, Roebuck & Company, Chicago, Il.
Sonoita Enterprises, Tucson, Arizona
Stephens, Inc., Little Rock, Arkansas
Texaco, White Plains, New York
Texaco, London, England
Texaco, Kyoto, Japan
Thomas Duke Company, Troy, Michigan
Transwest/NCH Corporation, Tucson, Arizona
Tucson-Pima Library, Tucson, Arizona
U.S. Tobacco, Greenwich, Connecticut
West Publishing, St. Paul, Minnesota
United Airlines, Chicago, Il.
Bank of America, San Francisco, California
Ashland Enterprises, Tucson, Arizona
Yellowstone National Park Headquarters, Yellowstone, Wyoming
