Pat Gerrard Cooke (4 June 1935 – 11 August 2000) was an English painter, illustrator and lifelong friend of artist LS Lowry (1887–1976).
Pat had a partly Irish heritage, via her grandmother Mary Veronica Perrin, who had emigrated to Liverpool.
Internationally regarded artist L. S. Lowry moved into The Elms, in Mottram in 1948, where he would live for the rest of his life.
She said that all her school holidays were filled with creating artworks and she worked as an "itinerant pub artist", from the age of 14, to earn pocket money.
[1][2][3][4] Lowry advised her: "find out what subjects you like to draw and paint, keep a limited palette, don't be influenced to change your natural style and then work very hard for at least fifty years.
She was strongly influenced by Georgian painter of people Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827) who was also an observer and illustrator of daily life.
She suffered from eye strain caused by the many hours of close attention she gave her paintings, working from 9–5 each day in a disciplined manner.
The Guardian wrote of her: "Pat's inspiration is the street, the pub, the cafe, the back alleys and the courtyards of Europe.
The newspaper compared her approach to that of Irish writer James Joyce: a shrewd observer of the small details and inflections of common, everyday life.
She asked "how can an artist lock himself away with all this happening outside and sit there painting flowers and abstracts and things?".
She noted that she was "scoffed at by a lot of painters because people understand my work and buy and customers who commission me say 'do it mainly in black and magenta, Pat luv, because the wife's bought this new carpet and it's for the same room'.