Siobhan McKenna,
Oil on Canvas,
103 x107cm,1964
Arts Council Collection
Barrie Cooke
1931 -
Barrie Cooke was born in 1931 in Chesire, England. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in art history before studying painting under American artists Rattner and Levine. Cooke came to Ireland in 1954 and the following year he won a scholarship to study at Oscar Kokosochka’s School of Seeing in Salzburg.Although he has some affiliation with the expressionist style,his artistic development is hard to define. He is preoccupied with nature and the elements and the themes of death, decay and rebirth. He is skilled in his depiction of people, with every portrait; he reveals a deep understanding of the sitter’s charachteristic features and their personalities as seen here in the image of Siobhan McKenna.