Barrie Cooke 1931 — 2014

Barrie Cooke was one of Ireland’s most esteemed painters, particularly of lakes and rivers.

A keen angler, he was moved to depict the increasing pollution in our water system in a series of paintings he made in the 1990s. These were included in a major retrospective of his work that ran in the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin and the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork to mark his 80th birthday in 2011.

Cooke was born in Cheshire, England in 1931 but spent most of his early years in Bermuda, Jamaica and the US. He hoped initially to pursue a career in biology, but abandoned that to study art history at Harvard University.

Cooke was one of nature’s bohemians. In 1954, he left Dublin on a motorbike, riding it west to settle in a remote cottage in Corofin, Co Clare. Here he lived without electricity or running water while he fished the rivers and developed his unique style as a painter.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner in 2011, he remembered his time there fondly. “I was the first person from abroad to move to Corofin. They were such good people and gave me everything I needed.”

Cooke had his first exhibition in Dublin in 1955. He later lived in Kilkenny and Sligo.

As well as his works on angling, Cooke is known for his paintings of Great Irish Elk, a series inspired by his encounter with a skeleton of the extinct creature at Trinity College Dublin.

He was also pre-occupied by the mythological figure of Mad Sweeney and the ancient stone carvings known as Sheila-na-gigs. The retrospective in 2011 also included many of his nude studies of women.

Cooke collaborated on work with English poet Ted Hughes and the late Seamus Heaney, who wrote of him that “as a fisherman and as a painter, on the riverbank and in the studio, he combines the quickness of perception with sparseness and intensity of action.”

Cooke was a member of Aosdana, and his work is included in the collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Ulster Museum.

He also had several major shows abroad.