Jean Cooke trained at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Camberwell, Goldsmiths College, and then at the Royal College of Art under Carel Weight and Ruskin Spear, she later ended up teaching there. Her first solo show was held at the Establishment Club, London in 1963. In 1971 she shared a show with Olwyn Bowey at the New Grafton Gallery, and has exhibited at the Royal Academy. Becoming an Associate, and Member, and with the London Group. Although primarily known as a painter, she is also a sculptor and potter.
Cooke was married to the artist John Bratby for a number of years, a fellow figurative realist painter of what came to be labeled the Kitchen Sink School. The artists of this group pictured the mundane surroundings of everyday life, and sitters in ordinary dress. Cooke has often painted her environment, although this extends out to include her garden, and seascapes at Sussex. She also became known as a portraitist. Her 1955 painting of a bespectacled Bratby, sitting by a table covered with checked cloth with a cat at his feet, is in the collection of the Royal Academy. Self portraits are a considerable part of Cooke's work. The artist exhibited at her joint exhibition with Diana Cumming at the Woodland Art Gallery, Greenwich. In 1976 Cooke poses, brush in hand, dressed in a heavy coat and fur hat reminiscent of those worn by van Gogh in his self-portraits of the late 1880s, In 1996, along with Maggi Hambling, Cooke was included in the exhibition In the Looking Glass. An Exhibition of Contemporary Self Portraits by Women, held at the Usher Gallery, Lincoln.
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