Joya: AiR / Jeannine Cook

‘Craggy mountain ranges impose above pine forests and orderly rows of almond trees as you near the hidden valley cradling Joya: AiR, a residency designed to inspire environmental awareness and stimulate a wonderfully wide-ranging exchange of creative ideas. With links back to times of Al Andalus when water was stored, distributed and enjoyed by humans and plants alike, Joya is a model for the restoration of the land and water husbandry, self-sufficient with electricity and all the other technological needs of our times. But it is also an inspiration and lesson to others that this way of life is totally possible in remote and depopulated lands.

The same sense of heritage of the skills from previous centuries that I found at Joya infuses my work as a metalpoint artist. More usually called silverpoint when you draw in silver, this little-known technique was born in medieval monasteries, celebrated in the early Renaissance, and again when it was rediscovered in the nineteenth century. This long heritage inspires me to create drawings that combine a contemporary view of the world, and especially of nature, with the traditional requirements of silverpoint. I loved the parallel with Joya’s way of life and history, with its exigencies of water and other infrastructure required to sustain life and stimulate the unusually rich creative and fascinating environment that I experienced during my residency’.

Jeannine Cook

Tanzanian by birth, European by heritage, British-American by nationality, Jeannine Cook is one of a small number of artists worldwide specialising in metalpoint drawing, a shimmering medium nearly 2000 years old that uses silver, gold or other styli to make marks. She has gained recognition in Australia, Japan, the United States and Europe, with her work in many public and private collections such as the British Museum, the V & A, the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, BAMPFA (Berkeley, CA), Georgia Museum of Art( Athens, GA), Western Australian Museum (Perth/Albany, WA), Consell de Mallorca (Baleares), Musée Carnot (Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, France).

Cook has long directed her energies towards using metalpoint, an unusual medium that attracts attention, as a means of celebrating different aspects of ecological habitats under duress and needing better stewardship. She frequently works with non-profits (e.g. The Nature Conservancy) to highlight such issues. Working from real life, she ranges from a botanical approach to close-up views of bark, stones, etc. that appear totally abstract.

Since metalpoint drawing is little known, Cook has also frequently worked with museums and galleries in the United States and Europe to promote this medium, by holding workshops and giving lectures on the unusual history of metalpoint in English, Spanish and French

Simon Beckmann27 June 2023