Details

First Name

ASHLEY
Last Name

COOK
Username

ashley-cook
Website

ashleycook.art
Region

Greater Glasgow
Disciplines

Printmaking
Themes

Botanical, Figurative, Narratives

Statement

Statement

My work tends to be narrative and emotionally driven; often focusing on the human form – the titles have a central position to resonate with the imagery. I’m generally drawn to surrealism and artists who present their inner worlds more than the world they see around them with their eyes.
Creating new worlds through words and pictures feels like magical thinking. Recently I’ve been working with ideas about the unconscious associations we make in our everyday surroundings – superstitions we’ve buried but linger inside us. Remnants of a past where we lived through folklore, reading omens from nature and our everyday surroundings, living by acts of everyday magic.

I work with a mixture of found vintage images which I chop up and use with my own autographic and photographic images; an eclectic library of personal and archetypal iconography. I create illusionist environments from disparate sources, working with an intense palette of colour opposites. I usually work from dark to light. The light source is always something that’s important to me – I like a dreamlike and nocturnal feel, building up images in multiple layers, using total coverage solids in combination with multiple transparent layers, using both positive and negative stencils.
When I went to Glasgow School of Art you chose a department to specialise in your second year of study; at the age of eighteen I chose printmaking and I have a stuck with it for more than four decades.
I love the authority of print, which produces an image which has gone through technical and mechanical processes. I enjoy working in multiples. I am attracted to print mediums with the ability to absorb photographic, geometric and painterly stencils which can be used in combination.

Biography

Biography

Ashley Cook is a Scottish Printmaker born in Edinburgh 1964. She studied at Glasgow School of Art, graduating with First Class BA Hons in1986, going on to do Postgraduate Printmaking in 1987. Following her studies, she was Screen-printing technician from 1987 to 1990, then Lecturer in Printmaking from 1990 to 1995 at Glasgow School of Art.

Ashley has continued her practice throughout –  winning awards, undertaking international artist residencies and exhibiting internationally. She has received awards from The British Council, The Scottish Arts Council, The Lady Artist Club Trust, Glasgow Art Club, The Icelandic Cultural Council, The Mexican Cultural Council and a Kate & Robert Wilson Town Award.

After leaving employment at GSA in 1995 she taught night classes and workshops in screen printing at Glasgow Print Studio and worked in the GPS shop until 2004. Following this she was Project Co-ordinator for The Scottish Academy of Asian Arts, running Glasgow Mela from 2004 to 2008.
She volunteered in The Gambia from 2008 to 2010, establishing a Centre for Children at Juffereh which is still open. In 2011 she resettled in Glasgow. Her journey became more internal and she focused on her own practice becoming a sole trader. Ashley produces her work at Glasgow Print Studio and has a studio nearby at WASPS South Block Studios. Ashley is represented by Scotland Art, Mansefield Park Gallery, Compass Gallery, 261 Gallery, Art Pistol, The Seagull Gallery, The Braemar Gallery and Tadhg Mae Projects. She is an elected member of The RGI and The Glasgow Group.

Her current passion is making decks of Tarot and playing cards which sell worldwide. She works in the mediums of screen-printing, mono-printing, digital imaging and collage, and promotes her work through social media. Her work is collected internationally.