Christian Hook Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1971 -

Christian Hoook studied illustration at Middlesex University, London before establishing a career as an illustrator for Disney, Reader's Digest, English Heritage and the National Trust among many other leading publishers. After lecturing in illustration at the Royal College of Art and other Universities his interest shifted to the fine arts. For the last five years Christian has focused on depicting motion, time and the moments that occur between events ¬- “We are always on the move, if not physically, mentally.” This interest in the in-between is combined with an intense study of Cezanne’s use of multiple view points to depict a single subject. Christian sites Antonio Lopez, Lucien Freud, Frank Auerbach,, Francis Bacon and Gerhardt Richter as other important influences.

Christian was the recipient of the inaugural Clarendon Fine Art Award. His work is included in numerous important collections including the collection of His Royal Highness Prince Edward. The paintings are rooted in tradition but feel fresh and contemporary. There is a fascination with classical art and the broken image combined with an exploration of time and motion through subsequent layers of transparent paint. The past and the present collide creating alternating perspectives on one subject. Every layer in the process represents a temporal shift that is perceivable yet hidden within the illusion of a definitive moment in time. Working in Gibraltar at the southern tip of Europe between the Atlantic and Mediterranean Oceans, there is within each painting a sense of the interweaving of Hispanic folklore iconography and the remnants of British colonialism.