Lynette Cook
United States
After growing up in Illinois, Cook attended Mississippi University for Women, receiving a BS in biology and a BFA in drawing and painting. She graduated with a MFA from the California College of the Arts in Oakland (drawing, with a specialization in scientific illustration), then became the staff Artist/Photographer for the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, a position she held for sixteen years.
Via freelance work and subsequent self-employment Cook worked with researchers at the forefront of scientific discoveries: most notably, discoverers of planets outside our solar system. This resulted in worldwide publication of Cook’s astronomical images in books, periodicals, documentaries, and press releases by Astronomy, BBC Television, CNN, The Discovery Channel, Japan Public Television, NASA, Newsweek, Scientific American, Time, and US News & World Report (a partial list). Cook also has been featured on ABC7 News (KGO) and in USA Today.
In 2010 Cook shifted direction toward painting, her first love. She now focuses on the urban environment of the San Francisco Bay Area. Career highlights include solo exhibitions at the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka, CA and Gallerie Citi in Burlingame, CA (2016), and at the Peninsula Museum of Art in Burlingame, CA (2020). Also in 2020 the de Young Museum selected two works for its "de Young Open" exhibit in San Francisco. Cook won the Grand Prize in "Lifting the Sky," the 2021 national exhibition of American Women Artists (AWA), which came with a $10,000 cash award. In 2022 Cook received the Signature First Place Award in the AWA Spring Online Juried Show and Third Place in the National Oil & Acrylic Painters' Society 5th Best of America Small Works National Juried Exhibition.
Cook is a 2016 grant recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her artwork is in the permanent collections of the City and County of San Francisco and Imagery Estate Winery, the largest single-theme art collection (wine labels) in the world. Cook's Shadows and Silhouettes series is represented by the Andra Norris Gallery in Burlingame
* This statement has been provided directly by the artist in association to their 16th International ARC Salon entries. This content has not been edited for typos or grammatical errors and has not been vetted for accuracy.
