New Paintings by Allison B. Cooke

Allison B. Cooke earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Art Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Drawing and Painting from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. After a thirty-year teaching career at the college level, she now paints full time in a warehouse just south of downtown Milwaukee. Allison has an extensive national exhibition record and is in permanent art collections in Germany, Japan, India, and Ireland.

Every summer, Allison travels in Italy, creates from a makeshift tabletop studio and experiences the expansive nature of new environments for inspiration. This has transpired in tandem with her position as a Director and an Adjunct Professor for a summer study abroad program at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence. Over the last twelve years, this immersive experience has played a major role in her artistic aesthetic and passion for aged surfaces revealing the palimpsest of time.

Allison's paintings explore transformation and its unique presence in the patinas that build up where time worn architectural structures, the human touch and atmospheric effects coalesce. She builds surfaces in both additive and subtractive processes with layered colors, and suggestive drawing/mark making in both experimental and intentional approaches.

Although she works in a wide range of media, most of Allison's paintings are made on a braced panel with oil paint, cold wax and may include powdered marble, dry pigment, and varying drawing materials. Her approach to painting resides in the interplay between recognition and suggestion, specificity and chance. Allison is interested in evoking materiality and meaning from a free-spirited studio practice with no preconceived notions of what may happen. Allison B. Cooke earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Art Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Drawing and Painting from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. After a thirty-year teaching career at the college level, she now paints full time in a warehouse just south of downtown Milwaukee. Allison has an extensive national exhibition record and is in permanent art collections in Germany, Japan, India, and Ireland.