Book excerpt: This beautifully illustrated monograph, including more than 50 colour plates of the artist’s work—most of which appear here for the first time—is the first critical study of the work of the artist Stephen Cook (born 1952), and will serve as both an introduction to, and analysis of, his output in the context of a tradition of figurative art in post-war Britain. The scrutiny of the subjects of these paintings point to a representation of a reality outside of the flux of things and of our everyday experience, albeit one that is derived from the immediately recognisable natural world. This is achieved not only through a method of close observation, but through the rigour of the application of that observation.