Her name may not mean anything to people outside the art world, but P J, or Pamela, Crook's paintings are instantly recognisable. Her vast canvases and innovative use of frames would make her a cult figure even without her distinctive brushwork and crowded scenes. No wonder, then, that her work has been exhibited all over the world and attracted the attention of celebrity collectors. Her latest exhibition, though, is closer to home, at the Brian Sinfield gallery in Burford, from July 1-31.
One of the things which makes Crook's work stand out - almost literally - is her use of frames. Compositions are extended around and across the frame, and the way Crook plays with boundaries, spatial positioning and mirrors does at times evoke Velasquez, although she does not cite him among her first influences. So why does she use parts of the canvas that other artists never reach?
"I could never find a frame that was right," is the candid explanation. Early on in her artistic career, she found that all frames seemed to restrict the painting, to cut them short, so she began painting over them. "They are a way of enticing people into the work. People often think they could walk into my paintings."
The sense of being on the verge of stepping into the painting itself is made stronger by the sheer size of some of Crook's canvases. Some are 70 inches square. P J says that her tendency to create such grand works can be explained by her love of a challenge. "I like not knowing if I'll be able to achieve what I hope to," she explains, adding that she tends to do the occasional miniature as relief.
Tightly packed canvases are another recurring Crook motif. Often, no scrap of canvas is uncovered, and this tendency to cram in images helps to convey a huge variety of different ideas; in Café, the squishing together of people and food lends itself to a social, sexual, almost cartoonish atmosphere, whereas in Ciné the closely arranged rows of people help to convey a sense of menace and shock. "I'm interested in claustrophobia," Pamela says.
The idea that everything's pushing in. I'm also fascinated by crowds, and the way you can use a crowd to hide in, to help you feel safer, as well as the way you can feel lonely. People from a distance all look fairly comfortable, but a lot are isolated and alone.
Surely such huge and tightly-packed canvases must require hours of careful planning? The surprising answer is that there is absolutely no planning at all, only heavy use of the artist's instinct. "People always think I plan really tightly," Pamela says, "but the composition is worked out as I go along. An interior can change a lot during the creative process, and intuition comes into it. Brushwork suggests a figure, or a movement. Sometimes it dictates to me, sometimes I dictate to it. When I don't know where to go with a painting, I put it aside and do something else. Then I see it with new eyes."
She draws a comparison between being an artist and gambling, which leads use to talk about her paintings on the subject of horse-racing. Pamela's father passed his love of the sport on to her, and now that she lives near the Cheltenham racecourse she has ample opportunity to visit and to draw inspiration from the crowds.
One of her paintings, Winning Circle, inverts her usual tendency to expand the painting beyond the frame, and imposes a border of tiny running horses on the picture, almost like a wallpaper frieze. From a distance, it seems to be a framed painting of a horse and its rosettes, perhaps given as a trophy. But move closer, and you realise that the horse is frozen in time, in the instant of winning the race, and that the rosettes are hats worn by people watching the race.
This visual joke illustrates perfectly the way that stuffier forms of art contrive to turn a moment into an artefact. "I like the idea that some paintings can bring a smile to somebody's face. Some subjects lend themselves to that," she explains.
Other subjects have been more controversial, like the Madonna and Child in her painting Fin de Siècle, where the Madonna is wearing her traditional blue, accessorised by a gas mask. It is a shocking, surreal image, and caused a media storm. But few could deny that it makes a bold statement about the dehumanising effects of war. She links motherhood and war again in her painting Other Mothers' Sons, about the first Gulf War, which hangs in the Imperial War Museum.
Few significant artists are as prolific as Crook - she has completely lost count of the number of paintings she has created. "I paint seven days a week; it's just part of my life," she answers, adding that her children thought all mothers painted. "I've been very fortunate in getting it off the ground. It is wonderful to do what you love, full-time."