Description |
The paintings of Nigel Cooke shows are mental landscapes, gloomy, melancholy scenes. They are surreal worlds populated by wandering artist and philosopher-figures. As in existential parodies of scenes, the protagonists find absurd in areas and situations, beyond logic and reason. Nigel Cooke's paintings construct a dark and melancholic world; a deeply psychologised landscape filled with an atmosphere that articulates the trauma of creative dereliction. At its core, Cooke's work is an allegorical conception of creativity and production, played out in a world populated by artists and philosophers. This is a place haunted by vagrant and degenerate martyrs who have caved in to a parody of existentialism and committed themselves to experience over abstractions of thought. These characters abandon reason, wilfully and foolishly throwing themselves headlong into the unseen and unknown. |