He paints quickly creating richly colored and exciting surfaces. Indeed, his bravura use of paint is akin to the Abstract Expressionists; unlike them, however, he provides the viewer with a recognizable reality, ordered by his own personal vision and controlled by his technical mastery. In subject matter and the interpretation of that subject, Cook’s is an American vision which owes much to tradition, but it is tradition that is, in the artist’s hands, fully redefined taking on a new, personal, but very important meaning.