PJ Crook is a painter of people and society, animals and environment, mythology and current events. Her vision of the world oscillates between surreal fantasy and the ordinary day-to-day. What unites all her work is both a technical mastery and a graphic figurative style. Crook paints from her imagination and works in a variety of media – oil, acrylic, tinted gesso – and expands her scene into the surrounding frame to better capture that vision. The critic John Russell Taylor wrote in The Times:
‘Ever since Hogarth there have been British artists who have reflected on life as it is really lived, but viewed from the grotesque side. In the twentieth century this has taken on an added intensity one might call expressionist in the work of artists like Stanley Spencer, William Roberts and Carel Weight. As in their work so in Crook’s, there is a feeling that something odd lies just beneath the surface: these ordinary people going about their ordinary business are somehow set apart, irradiated by a strange otherworldly light; for all their ordinariness, they are marching to a different drummer. And in fact, despite her almost defiant Britishness, it is not by chance that she has worked so much with French galleries and is so highly valued abroad. The strangeness in her works may also recall a very different order of strangeness, that of Surrealists like the great Belgian Delvaux, master of moonlit mystery. Crook’s paintings have the unexpectedness of real life and the hallucinatory clarity of a dream. The art has excellent connections, but finally it stands on its own feet and confidently possesses its own personal world.’
Certain themes have been consistent throughout Crook’s career such as depicting a crowd reading a plethora of daily newspapers to capture a moment in time. These paintings can mark a momentous period in time such as the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks or they freeze an otherwise ordinary day where the headlines are focused on football players and royal gossip. The evolution of newspapers themselves is fascinating to track via Crook’s long career while the crowds of faces continue to ingest the latest news. Another technique that is unique to Crook’s oeuvre is to sometimes paint onto specially designed corrugated bases that are overlaid with canvas. These undulating three-dimensional works create an intense sense of movement and are well suited to capturing groups of figures or the charge of racing horses. The viewer can gain an entirely different perspective on a scene simply by tilting their head.
Crook studied at Gloucestershire College of Art (1960-1965). She was born and raised in Gloucestershire and still lives near to Cheltenham with her husband and fellow painter Richard Parker. For over four decades Crook has exhibited internationally, including over fifty one person shows in London, Paris, New York, Toronto, Florida and Tallinn Estonia. Also museum shows at the Royal West of England Academy (1997, 2017), the Morohashi Museum of Modern Art in Japan (2001, 2006, 2012, 2016, 2018), the Gloucester City Museum & Art Gallery (2002, 2006, 2012), The Wilson, Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum (1986, 1996, 2006), Musée Paul Valery, Séte in the South of France (1996). A monograph has been published about her work, ‘PJ Crook’ published by Editions Ramsay, Paris (1993) and another edited by Martin Bailey for the Artemesia Press, 2003 - this is currently being revised and brought up to date. A catalogue raisonné is also in preparation.
Crook has won numerous awards and accolades including an honorary Doctor of Arts from the University of Gloucestershire in 2010, MBE for services to art in 2011, and an honorary Vice President of Gloucestershire College in 2012. She is a Patron of various charities including the National Star College and LINC, she is President of the Friends of Cheltenham Art Gallery Museums and former director of the Artists’ Collecting Society.
Crook has taken on a number of notable commissions which have included tours to Saudi Arabia and Japan for a large scale corporate commission. Her work is often reproduced on book covers, particularly for the Oxford University Press, Livre de Poche and Penguin whilst the progressive rock band King Crimson have often reproduced her paintings on their album covers.
We will be holding a solo exhibition of PJ Crook’s work in the summer of 2025. To register your interest please contact Florence Batchelor.