PJ Crook
PJ Crook is known for her graphic figurative style and three-dimensional paintings that oscillate between surreal fantasy and the everyday. She studied at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design (1960–65) before working freelance as a textile designer and maker of wooden pop art objects in London. Crook resumed painting in 1972. Recurrent themes of her narrative works include crowds, family, and games. Many seem peaceful and dreamlike at first but underlying tensions arise onat closer inspection. She usually draws upon a blend of memory and the subconscious to produce paintings characterised by a haunting Surrealist style. Current events sometimes provide subject inspiration, or simply the strangeness of everyday life. Space is often confused in her paintings through the incorporation of corrugated bases or protruding wooden elements. Painted frames are an important part of her work. The narratives from the canvas spill onto the frame and into the viewer’s space, in order to dismantle barriers between the artwork and its surroundings. Accolades held by Crook include an MBE for services to art (2011), Honorary Doctorate of Arts, University of Gloucestershire (2010), and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
