Ian Cook,

I approach landscape painting in a non-representational manner.  I blend a strong background of colour field painting with non-traditional landscape painting to create work with rich, deep, thick colour.

I am less interested in accurately detailed representations of the landscape, but rather my focus has been to illustrate the impression the space and the signature of the land.  It is important to me not to be too literal.

I am strongly influenced by the Alberta landscape that I grew up in.  The vast rolling plains have been the source of thought, and my subject matter for close to two years.  I paint in a non-traditional manner where I stretch my canvas over plywood and paint horizontally on the floor.  This technique allows me to apply layers of washes that can pool and create translucency without the fear of fighting gravity.  I use coarse garnet gels and coarse pumice gels in measured quantities mixed with pigments to create thick and meaty earth surfaces.

My work’s subject is a conceptual framework that bridges some abstract qualities but still remains identifiably Alberta.

I was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1971.  I took to art as soon as I was able to hold a crayon.  I attended Red Deer College in 1990-92 and earned a Associate Diploma in Fine Art.  After Red Deer College I attended the University of Calgary and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) between 1992 and 1996. 

I have had several group shows including the shows at the Nickel Arts Museum in Calgary, the the Little Gallery in Calgary and Leonard Cohen Symposium in Red Deer. 

Most recently I had three works published in the November/December 2009 issue of Litterbox Magazine.com (www.litterboxmagazine.com).

Please sign my Guest Book or send me a note through my Contacts Page, I look forward to hear from you. 

Ian