2008-08-17 "The waitress chewed gum and called me honey"

Twenty-eight views of the late Beryl Cook's 1983 working holiday in New York City are featured in this A4-size publication. From breakfast in the hotel - "The waitress chewed gum and called me honey" - to the evening bars of Grand Central Station, Beryl shows us what she and her husband got up to, from watching the world go by in Central Park to playing the slot machines in Atlantic City. Indeed, the geography of her artistry stretches as far as the Botanical Gardens in the Bronx right down to Brooklyn's Coney Island.

There is very little of the cityscape itself; for example, there is only one with skyscrapers and they are on the horizon in the distance. As she readily admits, Beryl is more interested in people and their immediate surroundings. Her tales are full of laughter and sympathy. There is also a faux naïve charm to much of what she paints and describes, such as the men sunbathing together in the dell in Central Park - "a most peaceful scene, quite silent, just watching eyes."

Don't expect Beryl to give an intellectual or breathtaking account of her visit to the Big Apple. All she has to do to please us is to be herself. As she says in her preface, her contribution to the excitement of New York is expressed in her pictures.