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Birds Creek painter, Abigail and her husband and young children moved from the Kawarthas to the Bancroft area a few years ago. In her studio on South Baptiste Road, she creates magnificent and unique acrylic on canvas paintings—primarily landscapes based on reference images she collects here in North Hastings, as well as on camping trips around Ontario. She has a very unique style that has evolved over the years from landscape images that not only covered the canvas but wrapped around the edges to her present looser vignette style placement of forests and hills and trees floating with white unpainted areas around the edges of the canvas surface. Abigail did not have formal art training but she recalls always loving art (especially Impressionism) after being exposed to it and other styles of painting she saw in books at a young age. She dabbled in original decorating of furniture with crafter colours; and studied books on art-making. As she matured, she took up painting on canvas with oils and at the age of fourteen, had one of her works win the “Future Promise” award when submitted to the Buckhorn Festival of the Arts—the prize being a 10-week course in oil painting at the Art School of Peterborough. She created art in oils as her medium until she was married and had her three children when the toxic thinners (then) required for oil painting gave her pause to be exposing her family to it; and she moved on to acrylics. She mastered the switch and that is her medium of choice going forward. As for shows and exhibiting of her work, she has participated in gallery juried shows and solo hanging of works in cafes, restaurants and Libraries as well as “The One of a Kind Show” in Toronto—that she will be returning to in spring of 2026. Local displays were at Sun Run café in Maynooth, the Art Gallery of Bancroft annual juried show and the Village Play House Studio Tour exhibition. She also has a strong online presence with Instagram: @abigailcookartist, Facebook: @Abiagil Cook and of course her website www.abigailcookartist.ca |
Be sure to attend the studio of Abigail Cook—located at 159 South Baptiste Road, Birds Creek—a mandatory stop during this coming fall’s BAST (the weekends of September 20-21 and 27-28). (Profile writing and photo by Allan O’Marra) |
