If you would like to see the artwork, please come visit us at Fairlawn Avenue United Church, 28 Fairlawn Avenue on Wednesday, October 18th from 1:00 - 4:00 pm or Sunday, October 22nd from 12:30 - 3:00 pm.

Edwy Cooke was a Canadian artist, professor of fine arts and art history, and museum director and curator. He is best known for his role as director of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick (1959-1964), and his work at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal (1964-1996) where, as a tenured professor, he established the institution’s first full course in Canadian Art History and served as director of the university’s galleries (now the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery). 

After completing his bachelor’s degree in art and archeology at the University of Toronto (1949) and master’s degree in fine arts from the State University of Iowa (1951), Cooke publicly exhibited his art at gallery exhibitions across Canada while maintaining his successful academic and administrative career. 

The current collection of his artworks up for auction, which span roughly 40 years of his artistic practice, demonstrate his astute knowledge of, and experimentation with, a variety of European and North American styles spanning the twentieth century. Moving from his early abstract oil paintings and depictions of Toronto’s evolving urban topographies to his later charcoal drawings and watercolours of Maritime landscapes, Cooke’s works capture the changing scenes of Canadian life and its artworlds.