Richard Cook

"In one sense the paintings are dreams and they're reflections and they're memories [...] but they are crucially tethered to one particular place. I think the thing about painting is it's always out of reach slightly ... one reaches for something and yet one can never have it or even touch it."

The works of Richard Cook are born out of a nervousness and longing to get down in paint, scratched and scraped with his fingertips, the feelings he experiences when looking at a view through the grass in a field or the excitement of an incoming storm.

Working up close to the canvas, Richard's works are as much about the quick physical activity that goes into them, as the scenes that he conjures from a scribbled preparatory sketch. As he works, the paints splatter and daub his studio floor - a carpet of his many years living and working in Newlyn in Cornwall.

Find out more about Richard and his manner of working in the Up Our Street link below:

Image: © Ollie Tomlinson