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Joseph "J" Cook
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Joseph "J" Cook (1936-2022)
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Joseph “J” Stewart Cook was a modernist painter and gallerist who emerged as a distinctive voice in the postwar California art scene. Working at the intersection of abstraction, landscape, and color theory, Cook's art explored the emotional and psychological resonance of nature through distilled, luminous forms. A deeply committed artist and arts advocate, Cook studied at several of California’s most important art institutions and exhibited widely throughout the state and beyond, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Palace of the Legion of Honor.
A native of Los Angeles, Cook diverged early from his sports-oriented siblings, gravitating instead toward visual expression. Recognizing his talent, his parents provided him with years of private art instruction. While still a student at Santa Monica High School, Cook was awarded an introductory scholarship to the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, followed by a full scholarship to the Otis Art Institute. A year later, he transferred to the Chouinard Art Institute—then at the heart of California’s avant-garde.
By the mid-1950s, Cook was exhibiting actively in both Los Angeles and New York. He entered the L.A. art scene at a pivotal moment, as the formal language of Modernism had taken root and new movements—Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, and Abstract Figuration—were reshaping the visual arts. Cook’s work reflected this fertile overlap of tradition and experimentation. Looking back on his early career, he reflected, “I was following the school of semi-abstraction. I was painting in a sort of traditional representative style, but it was all very abstracted.”
His paintings drew attention to the sublime and formal qualities of natural environments—canyon walls, seashores, and coastal light. Open fields of color, archetypal shapes, and softened, dissolving edges evoked a sense of meditative vastness. Like Georgia O’Keeffe, whose New Mexico landscapes he admired, Cook found profound inspiration in the American Southwest. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, he made regular pilgrimages to Santa Fe and Taos, creating a body of work inspired by the region’s dramatic geography and spiritual atmosphere.
Cook’s approach to nature was often filtered through the lens of pure abstraction. At times, his paintings recall the sensibility of Color Field masters such as Jules Olitski, whose hazy, dematerialized canvases created an intense ocular experience. Similarly, Cook’s figurative works from the 1970s evoke archetypal beings in states of transformation—figures that seem to simultaneously materialize and vanish—resonating with the spiritual and existential inquiry of the era.
He exhibited widely in major institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1966), the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Oakland Art Museum, and the Laguna Art Museum. In 1968, he won the top award from the National Watercolor Society, an organization he would later lead as president in 1977. Cook also served as a member of the board and president of the Pacific Palisades Art Association and the Westwood Art Association.
In 1963, Cook opened The J. Cook Gallery and frame shop on San Vicente Boulevard, which was frequented by well known names in Los Angeles' creative class. His clients included authors Henry Miller and Ray Bradbury, as well as actors Vincent Price—a noted art collector—and Gena Rowlands.
Though deeply connected to the L.A. art world, Cook maintained a personal and introspective studio practice. For much of his life, he lived with his parents, Chauncey and Helen Cook, and kept his studio in their home. In 1961, he traveled through Europe, conducting an independent study of museums and galleries—an experience that deepened his understanding of global art history and modern aesthetics. Cook also traveled to Japan in the 1970s, where he nurtured relationships with local print dealers and subsequently exhibited fine Japanese prints at his gallery.
In 1992, Cook relocated to Carmel, California, where he built a custom studio and gallery space in nearby Sand City. This marked the beginning of a highly productive final chapter. At his Sea Drift Studio, he produced large-scale paintings and sculptures sometimes inspired by his regular beachcombing. These late works—abstracted seascapes and dense compositions of driftwood, sea glass, and other found materials—reflect a full-circle return to the elemental forms of nature. “All I know,” he once said, “is that I'm here to work in this area because of the horizontal light and the unique beauty of the landscape. I think you eventually have to go back to that base of nature; it's a touchstone that artists live by.”
J. Cook passed away in 2022 at his home in Carmel at the age of 86.
Cook left behind a substantial body of work that continues to resonate. After his passing, family and friends undertook the task of archiving and preserving his personal collection. We extend deep gratitude to those who safeguarded his legacy - especially his nieces and nephew Anne, Elizabeth, Robert and Terry; and family friends Beth, Janet and Pat for bringing J’s art and story to Lost Art Salon.
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