Jack Cocker “New Paintings”
Jack Cocker “New Paintings” November 8-29, 2025
Opening Reception with the artist on Saturday, November 8 from 2-4pm.
We are eagerly anticipating Jack Cocker’s upcoming November solo, his third at the gallery. Painted over the past year, the five monumental canvases combine figurative and landscape painting that explores imagery familiar to him in South-Western Ontario.
In his paintings, Cocker concentrates on ideas such as genuineness, connection, spirit, and memory. The subjects that he chooses to paint spark a prolonged curiosity demanding that they be explored through painting. Originating from a fragment of an image like a figure or a landmark, a memory or a story that he has heard, his subjects are familiar, usually with a personal connection or an autobiographical undertone.
While the image and its backstory remain important to him, what captures his interest in the first place is the process of negotiating the image with paint and his imagination in creating a picture that continues to make painting challenging and deeply rewarding for him. “I don’t want my paintings to be observational or based in realism – they should exist as paintings, first and foremost”.
Emerging artist Jack Cocker (born 2001) grew up in Norwich, ON. He has a BFA from Western University (2023) and is currently in his first year of his MFA at the Emily Carr School of Art + Design in Vancouver.
Jack Cocker has received several awards including the 2023 Gray Creative Arts Award in Visual Arts. In 2024 he was named “One to Watch” by the Canadian Art Junkie and was selected as a “2024 Art Favourite” in Art Canada Institute’s year-end list. The March 2025 Canadian House and Home magazine prominently featured Cocker’s paintings in their Artist File column, a recurring profile on emerging artists selected by art advisor Diana Hamm. Cocker’s work is in the collections of the Ivey Business School and private collections across Canada.