Nigel Cooke

Born :

August 22, 1957

The paintings are kind of set in the past, present, and future all at once.

painting kind past

The moment is never perfect. It's like that right now - in my head I'm being super lucid, but you never are. You're always fumbling.

right-now moments perfect

What really surprised me was how strange my paintings are anyway. To me, it's like, "Let's paint some portraits and some objects. Don't make it weird, just make it dead straight," but it's still weird. I don't know why. I guess it's just the way I see things.

portraits strange way

I'm a quiet person, I'm not a flashy art world person. I'm in the studio in the middle of nowhere. There's sheep and fields. The work has to be authentic in that way.

middle-of-nowhere sheep art

The paintings don't exist outside themselves. There's no lead photograph off the internet or anything like that. It all comes from my mind and it's a bit like a little movie each time - how do I get the props, the setting, the time of day, the light, the action.

light mind littles

There are absences, but there are also presences. It's about how painting can evolve its own abstractions. I didn't know the painting was going to be about that, but it has to have that journey; I have to learn something, I have to end up somewhere I didn't expect to be, otherwise, I don't think it's painting.

painting journey thinking

Using painting as a metaphor for consciousness is what I'm interested in.

painting metaphor consciousness

Small thoughts grow into a picture. It may suggest an individual or it may suggest a place, but generally the painting's job is to work that [idea] into an abstract proposition that is completely removed from the starting point.

may jobs ideas

I felt like I had reached the end of a period of life, where the work was jumping about and pushing something new every time. I wanted to dial it back and create a language that was stable and deep.

pushing jumping language

There are certain times when a painting accelerates beyond you, and you have to try and understand and catch up with it.

painting certain trying

There are things that inform the works, but that doesn't go anywhere near what you're actually looking at.