Toby Cooke

Toby was born in Stirling in 1986. In 2004 he enrolled in a one year Foundation Course at Leith School of Art, Edinburgh. There he discovered his love for painting and in successfully obtained a place at Edinburgh College of Art in 2005. There he specialised in Drawing and Painting, graduating in 2009.

His work explores both rural and architectural landscapes. In doing so he questions the relationship between the natural and the man-made, and how their certain artistic elements can be used to blur the boundaries between them. When they are reduced to their bare essence, be it the areas of mass (such as land and sky) become obscured, the work transcends beyond the physical and literal representation. They instead focus on the feel, mood and spirituality of the place where the image originates from. Through this idea the formal ‘construction’ of the image, the medium and its application, is vital in portraying the landscape’s qualities.

His work has been shown across Scotland and is also in a Private collection in Berlin and Germany. Toby has done various curating, designing and assembling of art exhibitions, such as Blueprint and Null and Void in 2009. For The Jolomo Scottish Landscape Awards 2009 Toby was awarded second place, winning £5,000 in prize money.

“I don’t see painting the Scottish landscape as a means to represent it, more a way of engaging with its character, its personality.”

“Toby Cooke’s serene Rothkoesque work gives us a dream like quality of the landscape that make you want to stop and stare and be drawn in…”

- John Lowrie Morrison

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