Cheryl Rock: the artist as child and the child as artist

Cheryl Rock with one of her works-in-progress .

[My October column in the News Advertiser]

Cheryl Rock: the artist as child and the child as artist

When Ajax artist and high school art teacher, Cheryl Rock was a child, she would make up the text and drawings for cartoon strips and mock advertisements and tape them to the walls of her family home. And, interestingly, even now, as a mature and accomplished painter and mixed media artist she is still combining images and texts in her work and hanging them on the walls of her home and, increasingly, the homes of patrons of her work.

Rock decided very early on in life that she wanted to combine being an artist with teaching. And she had very good role models for this with her high school art teacher in Scarborough, a Ms. Atkins, a full-time artist as well as an art educator; and an off-the-wall professor at the University of Windsor, both of whom encouraged critical thinking and the thirst to communicate.

After receiving a BFA and a follow-up teaching degree from Windsor, Cheryl challenged herself with a year of teaching English in a small city in Japan. The immersion into a foreign culture was a dramatic beginning for her teaching career and, importantly, taught her the similarities of people’s perceptions of life and living. When the year of teaching was up, Rock decided to depart Japan on a high note and came back to a teaching position in Durham Region. She is presently a full-time art teacher at J. Clarke Richardson Collegiate in Ajax.

And there is a third culture that is very dear to Cheryl Rock: her roots in the Caribbean island of Barbados, the original homeland of her parents – and where she has spent quality time over the years in visits with grandparents. And the culture and history of that background profoundly informs her paintings and drawings. As a mature artist, she credits black feminist American photographers and the iconic Canadian artist, Betty Goodwin with influencing her expressions of narrative and figures that challenge oppression and encourage the resilience of, especially, women and healthy engagement with living for all.

The future holds more showings of her work in Durham Region and increasing involvement in arts and cultural events in Toronto plus activism in setting up Black studies for students here on her home turf. See Cheryl Rock’s work and find contact information at