Painter, draughtsman, writer, printmaker and teacher, born in London. It was while working at Odhams Press that Coker handled artists’ drawings and began studying initially part-time at St Martin’s School of Art, full-time, 1947–50, then Royal College of Art, 1950–4, winning a Royal Scholarship in 1951. A British Institution Scholarship followed three years later. From 1954–73 Coker taught at St Martin’s School of Art. When he left college Coker became associated with the Kitchen Sink realist painters and had the first of a string of shows at Zwemmer Gallery in 1956. In 1962 he participated in the Arts Council touring exhibition British Painting 1950–7, in 1966 in another Arts Council show, Painters in East Anglia. By then his attention had been diverted from the early butcher’s shop subject, which shocked many people, to landscape, which remained his preoccupation.
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Structure, texture and movement were key features of Coker’s analysis of the world around him. He showed regularly with Thackeray Gallery for many years. In 1972 he was elected RA, the year of his retrospective at The Minories, Colchester; a further followed at Chelmsford and Essex Museum in 1978; in 1979 the butcher’s shop series was featured in a retrospective in Liverpool plus tour; and in 1992 a retrospective of landscapes toured from Abbot Hall, Kendal. Coker had suffered two heart attacks and a serious stroke in 1990, tried for a couple of years to continue painting, but eventually had to give up both art and the travel he loved. In 2001, in a wheelchair, he visited Paris and began working seriously again. The outcome was exhilarating, energetic and often abstracted oils, drawings, etchings and lithographs stemming from “an explosion of pent-up creativity that, since my stroke in 1990, I had not thought would be possible.” His career was further revived with a major retrospective at Chris Beetles Ltd in 2002. In 2003, the privately printed Peter Coker RA New Work 2002 appeared, accompanying an exhibition at Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury. Recent works were shown at RA Friends Room, 2004, when there was another Beetles show of 2002–3 pictures. Peter Coker RA: A Juxtaposition 2004 was at Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, in 2004–5, and in 2005 Piano Nobile Fine Paintings held a retrospective. In 1976 Coker published Etching Techniques. Sheffield City Art Galleries is one of several provincial galleries holding his work. Lived in Mistley, Essex.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
