It’s International Women’s Day 2024
What better way to mark the occasion than to share works of art by celebrated artist PJ Crook MBE RWA FRSA?
We are delighted that PJ’s exceptional work will be shown at this year’s Fresh: Art Fair with The Paragon Gallery, Cheltenham. PJ’s paintings embody a style and sophistication that reaches beyond the boundaries of reality into extraordinary storytelling. Characteristically flattened and styalised, her paintings exude the joie de vivre of a bye-gone age; intermingling animals with humans – an even shoes and inanimate objects – in such a way that they are all seen as animate, as characters with hidden lives and meanings. The work has a surrealist edge, and the images are all encompassing, covering both the canvas and frame, which adds depth, dimensionality, and a feeling that there is an importance to the inner lives of the characters she paints. This stretches beyond the convention of that square stretched piece of primed cloth – which has throughout time represented the boundary of the artist’s imagination, and of the viewer’s conceptualisation of the image.
Represented by Panter & Hall in London, the Bridgeman Art Library also holds hundreds of images under license for the artist. PJ Crook’s artworks have been sold by some of the most prestigious auction houses in the UK, including Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Newspaper reviews of her artwork define her as an important artist in our time:
‘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.’
‘The Independent’‘The artist is a virtuoso in the mischievous art of beguiling our perceptions and expectations – her work is a disconcerting meditation on our assumptions of reality.’
Beatrice Comte in ‘Le Figaro’
‘Crook is a Patron of the National Star College Cheltenham; a Patron of Linc; a Patron of Artshape; a sometime Trustee and director of ACS (the Artists’ Collecting Society); Patron of Cheltenham Open Studios; a Gloucestershire Ambassador; President of the Friends of Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum; member of the Royal West of England Academy; Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. She is a member of the Chelsea Arts Club and the Honourable Company of Gloucestershire. PJ Crook has an honorary Doctor of Arts from the University of Gloucestershire and is an honorary vice President of Gloucestershire College.
PJ Crook was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to art.’ (Source: Wikipedia)
The first ever embodiment of ‘living art’ for our event – taking place at the fair this April, will be based on an artwork by PJ Crook. The enlarged artwork, involving actors playing the roles of life-sized characters from the painting, will move in and out of the work seamlessly, leaving you to wonder if they are actually alive, or if it was a figment of your imagination! This will be a compelling, must-see part of the Cheltenham fair. Come along to take a look, shoot a video, or take some photos and add them to your social media! Seeing will be believing!
We were excited to see that PJ herself was celebrating International Women’s Day earlier today with a post on Twitter/X which celebrates the female artists of Japan – you can view the post here @drpjcrook
