Barrie Cook obituary

The abstract artist Barrie Cook, who has died aged 91, developed a penchant for spray-painting, with which, as he put it, he tried to “break the habit of brushstroke mentality”. The technique enabled him to create striking repetitive patterns, dominated by blurred stripes and geometric forms, some of which were based on photographs. Yet the compositions, which were often developed through numerous drawings, were anything but mechanical. Their shimmering contrasts of tone and colour, and disconcerting spatial effects, often produce a visual sensation reminiscent of op art, as in the acrylic and charcoal Painting (1970), in the Tate collection.

Air-brushing was a technique that Cook came across as a youth working in an advertising department but he first encountered it in a fine art context in the mid-1960s when sharing the Worcestershire studio of the painter John Walker. It was then that he devoted himself to this rapid, exhilarating medium.

The overall effect can be hypnotic, as well as physically arresting, particularly in his series of larger works, which could measure three or four metres across. His paintings had no predetermined meaning – in his words they “refer to themselves”. As Cook described it: “The importance is to evoke some stirrings within the spectator’s subconscious.”

Cook also absorbed influences from the international heroes of abstraction, including Sonia Delaunay, Josef Albers and Frank Stella. Above all, however, he was inspired by his fellow British artists, from Patrick Heron to the less widely known Adrian Heath and Harry Thubron. Crucially, Heath introduced Cook to Terry Frost, whom Heath had taught while the two men were PoWs in Bavaria during the second world war.

It was the friendship with Frost that in 1992 encouraged Cook and his wife, Mary, to move to Cornwall, which he had first visited as a child for summer holidays. Its landscape and light infuse some of Cook’s earliest watercolours and much later, in the 90s, led to a joyful brightening of his palette. At this time his paintings began to be flooded with turquoise, blue, orange, yellow and cadmium, in contrast to the more industrial hues of previous decades.

Light became a medium for Cook’s spiritual beliefs, which were influenced by his reading of the work of Karen Armstrong, a theologian, and the notion of a God who is both male and female. Armstrong’s concept of the sublime inspired some of Cook’s most meditative and luminous canvases.

Cook was by origins a Midlander. He was born in Birmingham and raised by his mother, Irene, a successful sprinter for Birchfield Harriers Athletics Club. His own sporting prowess included athletics with Birchfield Harriers and rugby for Walsall, as well as work as a physical instructor during his military service with the RAF.

Only when he was 20 was Cook able to start his training at Birmingham College of Art. This period was crucial to his development, if only because it exposed him to traditions against which he could later rebel. During this time he also met Mary Bartram, a nursing student, whom he married in 1951.

After graduating in 1954 Cook taught for a decade at Bournville boys technical school, as well as working at the art colleges in Coventry and Stourbridge, where he was head of fine art from 1969 to 1974. He was honoured with a Gregynog arts fellowship at the University of Wales in 1977 before once again becoming a head of fine art, this time at Birmingham Polytechnic, two years later. In 1987 he was to return to Wales, for an art residency at the National Museum in Cardiff.

Throughout his teaching career, he maintained a busy programme of exhibitions across the UK, from the Oriel Gallery in Cardiff to the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow. However, two solo shows in London stand out. These are Large Paintings from Black to White, curated by Bryan Robertson in 1975 at the Whitechapel Gallery, and an equally monumental display in 1988 at the Serpentine Gallery.

For all this success, Cook’s anti-establishment views and independent spirit never fitted easily into the London art scene, and he was far more at ease when he made the move to the Lizard peninsula almost 30 years ago. He rarely missed a day working in his studio, a converted Methodist hall, but also enjoyed his family, his garden and the social pleasures of rural life.

Mary died two days after Cook. He is survived by his daughter, Francesca, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

• Barrie Cook, painter and teacher, born 18 May 1929; died 13 July 2020