DAVID continuing the search COOK
2 April - 2 May 2026
When spring arrives, the garden bursts into life, as do I, a relief from long dark winters. Spring to late summer is always a productive time for me. I wanted to show the garden bursting into life. The colour, the energy. The garden seems to pour into the studio. I immersed myself fully in and became as close as possible to the elemental force of nature. I tried and see more deeply the elements working their magic, to forge and create the way the garden grows.
David Cook
DAVID COOK | rooted
and restless
For an artist who has lived and worked for over two decades on the edge of the North Sea, the notion of “search” is both practical and poetic. At Seagreens, where garden meets coastline and weather dictates the rhythm of the day, David Cook’s practice has long been rooted in a profound engagement with place. Yet this exhibition, Continuing the Search, signals not a return, but a deepening, ongoing enquiry into light, growth, labour and renewal within the landscape he calls home.
I have been visiting David Cook at Seagreens Cottage for ten years, and it is always a memorable visit. Driving north of Dundee, the horizon begins to open above the pattern of undulating fields through ‘Jim Morrison’ country. Crossing the North Esk above Montrose, the coastline draws close on your right, and the landscape is increasingly claimed by sky and sea. A turn from the main road and a narrow, winding descent brings you towards the shore, where Seagreens Cottage sits just metres from the crashing waves in a landscape largely unchanged for centuries.
Over the years, the studio and garden have evolved with the rhythm of Cook’s practice. The garden, an acre around the cottage and outdoor studio, is left wild and untamed. In the height of summer, it presses against the windows, grasses and hawthorn almost breaching the interior. In winter, bare branches cower, wind-bent and salt-bitten. For Cook, periods of intense creativity chart his own calendar. His last exhibitions have seen him focus with remarkable concentration on subjects that compel him: the industrial landscapes of his youth in Lochgelly, the wildflowers around his
home, and the sea, a constant backdrop and elemental presence in his life.
We enjoy creative discussions as we walk the coastline, and the chance to witness the physical toil of the studio is always enriching. On returning to the car ahead of the return journey, one can find it foam-covered and salt-patterned from the incoming tide.
In this new body of work, Cook turns his sustained attention to the garden and immediate landscape surrounding his home. In Angus, pockets of wilderness persist between farmland, tracks and coast: places where gorse blazes on steep banks above Seagreens and where the Den of Finella cuts a hidden gorge through the land, its waterfall enclosed by forest and legend. Yet it is the garden that anchors this exhibition, observed across the seasons. Never presented as a pastoral idyll, it is instead a site of labour and attentiveness: bulbs forcing their way through cold soil, seed heads scattering, grasses bending and rising again in the
I’ve moved the studio into the house for the winter because there’s a fire in there. I used to work out in the cold, but I think I’m getting a bit older now - I need some comfort. Winter always slows things down, but that’s what winter is for. On the first of December it’ll be 22 years here at Seagreens. I’ve changed over that time. There are paintings I couldn’t have made years ago. Every year I notice some kind of shift, and hopefully the work grows stronger. It’s a bit of a mystery, really, but you have to go with the mystery. David Cook
wind. It is a landscape in flux, shaped by weather, time and the act of looking, held in tension between growth and decline.
The paintings in this exhibition chart the turning of the year, with particular intensity in spring and autumn, when colour reaches its most heightened pitch. In spring, the shock of new greens and blossoms arrives against the winter’s restraint; in autumn, ochres, crimsons and deep umbers flare before retreat. Cook’s handling of oil paint, laid on in rich impasto, mirrors this vitality. The surface of each canvas carries the energy of its making, paint worked and reworked until it holds the sensation of wind through stems or the golden arc of a sinking sun.
One can read a dialogue between Cook and Van Gogh in this body of work. Not the borrowing of motif, but a shared intensity of looking that resonates, and the belief
When I’m standing in front of the easel, painting these landscapes, all my memories flood through my mind. I’m quite intense when I work, quite focused, quite aggressive as well. It’s a physical and mental thing. I’m not copying something out. I’m a human being, so all the emotions in me - hopefully they come out and show themselves on the canvas... Painting is physical, it’s real. In a way, all my paintings are selfportraits. David Cook
that landscape can carry emotional and spiritual weight. Van Gogh’s ability to invest fields, trees and sown earth with urgency and humanity finds an echo in Cook’s own approach. The Sower’s arc echoes in Cook’s own repeated return to his motif, walking the same ground, observing the same view, yet always seeking something newly revealed. The search is not for novelty, but for truth: how to hold in paint the transient effects of light and season.
Working in relative isolation, Cook’s dialogue is primarily with his surroundings. The sound of the sea, the view north towards Johnshaven and south towards St Cyrus, the movement of clouds across the horizon, these remain constant presences. Yet within this constancy lies infinite variation. The garden becomes a microcosm of the wider landscape, a theatre in which the grand cycles of nature play out at human scale.
Continuing the Search, David Cook’s sixth major exhibition at The Scottish Gallery, presents a painter at once rooted and restless, committed to the discipline of looking and to the belief that landscape is never exhausted as a subject. Each season offers new challenges, each canvas a renewed act of faith. In these works, David Cook invites us to share in that search, to stand in the garden at Seagreens, to feel the air shift from spring to summer to autumn, and to witness the enduring conversation between artist and nature.
TOMMY ZYW
The other day the sky was extraordinary - a violet band above the sea and green clouds building like mushroom towers. It was unbelievable. Moments like that stay with you. You see a colour vibrating in the hedgerowhawthorn glowing, blossom catching the light - and something happens in your brain. It might just be a weed in autumn with a particular tone to it, but it triggers something. I can’t always pin it down. David Cook
1 Early Morning Mist oil on canvas, 60 x 60 cm
2 Willow in Blossom oil on linen, 60 x 70 cm
3 Rosebush Study I oil on board, 17.5 x 24 cm
4 Rosebush Study II oil on board, 17.5 x 24 cm
5 Trees in Full Blossom oil on linen, 60 x 70 cm
6 Red Hot Pokers oil on linen, 30 x 40 cm
7 Spring oil on canvas, 120 x 120 cm
This summer the ponds dried up completely-no water at all. I painted the hawthorn glowing across the field, vibrating in the heat. I did three large paintings and a couple of smaller ones. The whole environment felt charged. Those are the moments that spark something. I’m not very good at expressing myself in words-that’s why I paint. Painting is a different language altogether. If a painting needs too many words to prop it up, then it’s not doing its job. But I understand that people want to come with you on the journey, to understand something of what’s behind it. I’m here all the time. The garden keeps changing-even now there are still roses out. I’ve painted that hawthorn tree so many times, and yet it’s never the same. That’s the search. David Cook
8 Sun over Hedgerow oil on canvas, 120 x 120 cm
9 Rosebush Study III oil on board, 17.5 x 24 cm
10 Group of Trees oil on linen, 76 x 102 cm
11 Spring Garden oil on board, 50 x 65 cm
12 Garden in the Evening oil on canvas, 90 x 100 cm
13 Edge of Ploughed Field oil on linen, 90 x 100 cm
14 Pink Bush oil on board, 16 x 19 cm
15 Sun over Finella oil on canvas, 120 x 150 cm
16 Embankment at Seagreens oil on linen, 120 x 120 cm
17 Wild Rose Bush oil on canvas, 120 x 120 cm
At Seagreens, where garden meets coastline and weather dictates the rhythm of the day, David Cook’s practice has long been rooted in a profound engagement with place. Tommy Zyw
18 Blossom oil on linen, 120 x 130 cm
19 Hawthorn oil on board, 23 x 30.5 cm
20 The Pond oil on canvas, 120 x 150 cm
21 Grasses oil on board, 20 x 25.5 cm
22 Line of Trees oil on linen, 76 x 102 cm
23 Garden Trees oil on board, 30.5 x 30.5 cm
24 Rose Bush Study oil on board, 30.5 x 30.5 cm
25 View Through to Fields oil on linen, 50 x 60 cm
26 The Bay at Seagreens oil on board, 20 x 25.5 cm
27 Bay at Seagreens oil on linen, 100 x 100 cm
The big landscape of the bay started with apple blossom in the garden, then moved out to the hedges and trees beyond. I never plan exactly what I’m doing, although I work things through in my head. Once a painting begins, it takes hold of me and leads me somewhere. It’s difficult to resist that direction, and most of the time I don’t. If I want to be completely free, I have to let it go its own way. That’s when the paint flows naturally. If I try too hard to control it, it doesn’t work. David Cook
28 View to Johnshaven oil on linen, 120 x 150 cm
29 Sun over Garden oil on board, 30.5 x 41 cm
30 Corner of a Wheat Field oil on linen, 100 x 120 cm
31 Lone Hedge oil on linen, 120 x 120 cm
32 Harvest Sun oil on board, 30.5 x 41 cm
33 Sun through the Haar oil on canvas, 100 x 120 cm
34 Evening Garden oil on board, 30.5 x 30.5 cm
35 Line of Trees Study oil on board, 30.5 x 30.5 cm
36 Morning Sun oil on canvas, 70 x 80 cm
37 Row of Trees on Yellow oil on board, 20 x 25.5 cm
38 Golden Autumn oil on linen, 100 x 100 cm
39 Wild Flowers oil on board, 41 x 50.5 cm
40 Autumn Trees oil on board, 57 x 67 cm
41 Hedgerow oil on board, 28 x 35.5 cm
42 Autumn Forest oil on linen, 100 x 100 cm
43 Row of Autumn Trees oil on board, 57 x 67 cm
44 Trees by a Wheat Field oil on linen, 60 x 70 cm
When I start a painting, I’ve no real idea what it’s going to become. There might be a few small winter pieces, or autumn seas - I often paint the winter - but I never know how a work will end up. And if I did know, what would be the point of doing it? It’s the journey to get there. I have to feel a sense of satisfaction in what I’m doing. If I was just copying something, repeating it, it would become mundane. I could show the work, but it wouldn’t do anything for me - so there’d be no point. I like to surprise myself, to keep myself on my toes. David Cook
45 Trees in Winter oil on canvas, 60 x 60 cm
46 Orchard in Winter oil on board, 41 x 51 cm
47 Winter Tree Line oil on board, 20 x 25.5 cm
48 Winter Fields oil on linen, 90 x 100 cm
The thing is, if you could explain everything about painting, then the magic would be gone...
David Cook
DAVID COOK b.1957
David Cook was born in 1957 in Dunfermline and attended Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee from 1979-84. He was recognised early as an exceptional talent, winning the first prize at the annual student show at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1983. He then won a travel award which took him to Paris, Amsterdam, Belgium and Cyprus. He won the Guthrie Award at the RSA in 1985 and was given Scottish Arts Council Awards in 1985, 1988 and 1989. He has exhibited irregularly but notably at The Traverse Theatre in 1982 and with the 369 Gallery throughout the following decade.
In the 1990s he was already visiting Seagreens (his current home) and staying at a cottage at Benholm, two miles to the North also frequented by Alberto Morocco and Ian Eadie. Cook travelled regularly in these years to Turkey, the Balearics and significantly, at the invitation of the Everard Reed Gallery, to Southern Africa for three months in 1997. He was able to secure the tenancy at Seagreens shortly after his return and eventually bought it in 2004. This sense of belonging is now deeply embedded; he can see the seasons change and paint the whole calendar; the daffodils of Spring, wild flowers of Summer, the Autumn skies and bleak drama of Winter are all on show: immediate, raw and compelling.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2026 Continuing the Search, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
2025 Nature Unleashed, Gallery Franklin, St Andrews
2023 Forged by the Sea, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
2021 Earth Shaker, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
2018 Seagreens Prospect, The Fraser Gallery, St Andrews
2017 Change, Ripeness and Decay, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Art in Healthcare, Edinburgh
City of Edinburgh Council
Dundee Art Gallery & Museums
Dunfermline District Museum
Glasgow Museums Resource Centre
Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow
Kirkcaldy Art Museum and Art Gallery
Knysna Fine Art, South Africa
Scottish Arts Council Collection
University of Dundee
University of Warwick
Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition:
David Cook
Continuing the Search
2 April - 2 May 2026
Exhibition can be viewed online at: scottish-gallery.co.uk/davidcook
ISBN: 978-1-917803-17-5
Designed and Produced by The Scottish Gallery
Photography by John McKenzie
Printed by Pure Print
cover: The Pond, oil on canvas, 120 x 150 cm (cat. 20)
All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders.
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