Crooke, Ray

Ray Crooke was born in Victoria in 1922 and died Palm cove 2015. He was trained at Swinburne Technical College, and spent four years in the army which took him to the far north and he continued his art studies by correspondence .

His reputation as a painter is largely based on his landscapes of Northern Australia. His first exhibition in Northern Australia of war paintings and drawings sold out but his second exhibition wasn't so successful so he decided to move south to Sydney.

He worked in Sydney briefly as a commercial artist before heading for the Torres Strait, where he worked as a trochus driver on a lugger.

He went to live on Thursday Island where he painted the local people and landscape. It is for his paintings of this and other nearby localities in Northern Queensland that he is best known today.

In the sixties his work was included in an exhibition of Australian art at the Tate Gallery, London and in 1966 he spent some time in Vietnam as an official war artist.

Crooke has a quiet conservative vision of the Australian scene reminiscent of earlier painters of the Australian landscape.

Gauguin has been an influence on his work in subject matter and in atmosphere.

Crooke is best known as a painter of the tropics.