Exhibition: Jean Cooke: Seascapes & Chalk Caves

Jean Cooke’s life-long association with the Sussex coast, particularly Birling Gap and the nearby village of East Dean, is explored and celebrated in a new exhibition of her work at London’s Piano Nobile gallery.

The exhibition focuses on a significant body of paintings, pastels and drawings representing a variety of different views and aspects of the beach, coast and sea made between 1963 and 2007.

Cooke (1927 – 2008) was born in London but had lived in East Dean during the Second World War and later forged a close attachment to Birling Gap. This beautiful outcrop, endangered by coastal erosion, provided sublime views of the sea and neighbouring chalk cliffs at Seven Sisters and Beachy Head. These views recur in Cooke's work, along with a series of extraordinary 'cave paintings', which depict the glistening sea from inside the chalk caves that line this stretch of the coast.

Jean Cooke: Seascapes & Chalk Caves presents a selection of over thirty rarely seen paintings the artist made over a 50-year period and coincides with inclusion of her work in Pallant House Gallery’s exhibition Sussex Landscapes: Chalk, Wood and Water.