Toby Cooke was born in Stirling in October 1986, and grew up near the village of Port of Menteith, Stirlingshire. Showing a keen interest in art from a young age, he enrolled in a one year Foundation Course at Leith School of Art, Edinburgh, in 2004. It was whilst at LSA that Cooke discovered his love of painting and, having completed the course in 2005, he successfully obtained a place at Edinburgh College of Art. Cooke studied at ECA from 2005 to 2009, specialising in Drawing and Painting.

Cooke’s work explores landscapes, both rural and architectural. In doing so he questions the relationship between the natural and the man-made, and how certain artistic formal elements can be used to blur the boundaries between these two types of landscape. When they are stripped back to their bare essentials, be it a single line to depict a horizon, or the areas of mass (land and sky) become obscured, the work transcends beyond physicality and literal representation, and focuses more on the feel, mood and spirituality of the places which the images derive from, be it a vast mountainside or a concrete wall.  In this respect the formal ‘construction’ of the work, the choice of medium and how it is applied, is paramount in conveying these qualities of the landscapes which are portrayed.