PANTER AND HALL SUMMER SHOW | PJ CROOK

PJ Crook (1945 - ) Oneday (2021), tinted gesso on canvas and wood, framed, 86 x 147cm

You might be forgiven for taking PJ Crook’s painting Oneday for an early ModBrit work from the 30s, with the stylised newspaper readers betraying their social class by the hats they are wearing. Look closer, and there’s an anachronistic edge to the painting: the newspapers they are reading – also social-hierarchy indicators – are those of 1995. In fact – since the chap in the flat cap is reading the last-ever issue of Eddie Shah’s tabloid Today – you can date the moment exactly, to November 17, 1995. To add another veil over this dance of time, the painting was created in 2021. The painter has an international reputation, and is particularly big in Japan, where a recent exhibition (alongside superstar surrealists such as Dali, Miro, de Chirico and Ernst) attracted three million visitors. She paints from remembered observation and imagination, most commonly in ‘tinted gesso’: mixing pigments into the primer creates her trademark muted palette.

Crook is one of the many big draws at Panter and Hall’s Summer Show, in their Main Gallery in Pall Mall until mid-August (exact date tba). The exhibition displays a mix of contemporary and 20th-century artists represented by Panter and Hall, including Glaswegian abstractionist Simon Laurie (on display at British Art Fair), figurative portrait artist Michael Hyam, and still-life painter Sian Hopkinson.