Nina Cook is greeting her first public exhibition with an uneasy mixture of excitement and dread. Contradictions of this sort are familiar territory for Cook, who soars and tips between courageously outspoken and anxiously introspective; at times gregarious and on other occasions unreservedly fretful.

With the opening night of Strong Migratory Tendencies on September 23 and decades of drawing and painting behind her, Cook has finally succumbed to the compulsion common to creative souls and dispensed of the hesitation that has until now confined her work to the approving gaze of colleagues, family and friends.Nina Cook is greeting her first public exhibition with an uneasy mixture of excitement and dread. Contradictions of this sort are familiar territory for Cook, who soars and tips between courageously outspoken and anxiously introspective; at times gregarious and on other occasions unreservedly fretful.

With the opening night of Strong Migratory Tendencies on September 23 and decades of drawing and painting behind her, Cook has finally succumbed to the compulsion common to creative souls and dispensed of the hesitation that has until now confined her work to the approving gaze of colleagues, family and friends.There's a proverbial disquiet about Cook's work that challenges the viewer to engage with the seemingly inscrutable facets of personality that dwell uneasily behind the masks we parade in public.

But her work is not a somber and hopeless affair. While they unashamedly explore pain, vulnerability, fragility and self-doubt they also celebrate those indomitable domains that define our common humanity and inviolability: nobility of spirit, salvation, versatility and resilience.

"I'm talking about things that can be chaotic. The sort of thing that screams through your mind when your blood sugar is low and you're feeling anxious and you have energy spots behind your eyes," Cook says.

Birds appear as a device throughout the body of work to describe polarities of emotion and experience, sometimes appearing as intricate avian-human syntheses and at other times restricted to an emblematic role in the visual narratives.

"I find birds very evocative usually but they were also the ideal vehicle for exploring those areas of the human psyche that are least often observed-the vulnerabilities that define our relationship with the external world and invite us to transcend the ordinary," she says.

"They represent freedom: we can stare into the abyss but birds can fly over it."

Redolent with post-modernist markers such as ornamentation, realism and stylized technique, Cook's work is exactingly executed by an adroit hand and attentive eye. These qualities allow her confidently to position her work on the edge of cliche and parody without risking it becoming predictable and pedestrian.

"I want to have a conversation with somebody about stuff that people don't usually talk about. Like thoughts about dying and feeling trapped-the complex emotional states that can present as the monster under the bed or just as easily as opportunities for new insight and understanding."

Strong Migratory Tendencies runs at COCA Gallery, 66 Gloucester Street, Christchurch, from Sunday September 23 to October 12, 2008.

About Nina Cook

"I want to have a conversation with somebody about stuff that people don't usually talk about. Like thoughts about dying and feeling trapped."
Nina Cook, Painter

A graphic designer by trade, Nina Cook tutors at CPIT's School of Art & Design and
Natcoll Design Technology, and somehow finds the time also to be a prolific artist. She has a degree in visual communication and has illustrated books, designed t-shirt art and turns her hand to any medium that best serves the purpose of conveying a particular message.

Image: Cock Fight, Acrylic on board

29/09/08