Coker graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1954 and quickly developed a bold personal style with heavily outlined forms abd encrusted paint layers built up with a palette knife. He was attracted to the expresive realism of the Kitchen Sink school in 1956 but their work was eclipsed by the vogue for abstraction following the Tate exhibition, "Modern Art in the United States" the same year.Here, the rugged brushstrokes help to convey the texture of gorse and bracken but also make a satisfying two-dimensional pattern on the canvas. Coker's landscapes balance truth to nature with formal rhythms of abstraction.