Pat Cooke

Pat Gerrard Cooke (4 June 1935 – 11 August 2000) was an English painter, illustrator and lifelong friend of artist LS Lowry (1887–1976). She is described as "one of the most commercially successful woman artists" of post-war Britain.

Born in Cheshire, with strong Irish heritage, she was mentored by Lowry from a child. She studied at the Manchester College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art, London, teaching until 1965 and thereafter working full time as an artist. She relished painting the lives of everyday people: "the street, the pub, the cafe, the back alleys and the courtyards of Europe"; a great appreciator of Liverpudlian street life. She wrote three books and held dozens of sold out exhibitions across the UK and Ireland.

Early life Pat Gerrard was born on 4 June 1935 in Mottram-in-Longdendale, Cheshire, the daughter of joiner Frank and Lilian Gerrard. Pat had a partly Irish heritage, via her grandmother Mary Veronica Perrin, who had emigrated to Liverpool. Internationally regarded artist L. S. Lowry moved into The Elms, in Mottram in 1948, where he would live for the rest of his life. He began a lifelong friendship with 13-year-old Pat. He advised on her art work and encouraged her to develop her use of oil paints. She said that all her school holidays were filled with creating artworks and she worked as an "itinerant pub artist", from the age of 14, to earn pocket money. This was the time when she began to appreciate everyday local people as her most interesting subject of study.

Lowry advised her: "find out what subjects you like to draw and paint, keep a limited palette, don't be influenced to change your natural style and then work very hard for at least fifty years." When she was 15 and studying at Hyde Grammar School, she painted two portraits of Lowry; one she kept and one was for him. Through her life, she gathered various works by the artist. She recalled her interest in drawing people beginning around the age of three.

Cooke was described as "one of the most commercially successful woman artists" in Britain in the post-war period. Most of her work hung in private homes during her lifetime, a fact she loved. Her work hung in the National Gallery of Ireland. By the early 1970s she had had 13 exhibitions, all of which had sold out, including two at the Andsell Gallery, London. She was invited by the James Joyce Foundation to exhibit in Dublin a series of Ulysses illustrations. She noted that she was "scoffed at by a lot of painters because people understand my work and buy and customers who commission me say 'do it mainly in black and magenta, Pat luv, because the wife's bought this new carpet and it's for the same room'. I don't curl my lip. Who am I to say it's got to be green? I'm a grocer, a journeyman." Lowry bought her work with enthusiasm. She enjoyed the fact that her mentor's art was owned by mill workers who just enjoyed the pictures of lives they recognised, regardless of art fashion or investment possibilities. Her funeral took place at Altrincham Crematorium.