Biography
Lynette Cook Photo: Ben Yount
After growing up in Illinois, Cook attended Mississippi University for Women, receiving a BS in biology and a BFA in drawing and painting. After graduating with an MFA from the California College of the Arts (drawing, with a specialization in scientific illustration), she became the staff Artist/Photographer for the Morrison Planetarium, California Academy of Sciences, 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, from historical landmarks to more common "everyday" scenes. She is a 2016 grant recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
Cook's Shadows & Silhouettes series features clothes hanging out to dry and the patterns of light and shadow created by fire escapes and balconies. This group is represented by the Andra Norris Gallery (formerly Gallerie Citi). Career highlights include solo exhibitions at the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka, CA 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, which came with a $10,000 cash award. 2022 brought Cook the Best in Show in the Acrylic International Biennial Juried Exhibition at the Kenosha Public Museum in Kenosha, WI. The Best Technique and Handling award was given to Cook’s entry this year at the NOAPS Best of America Small Works Exhibition 2023 (National Oil and Acrylic Painters' Society) in Boulder, CO.
Other series include paintings of favorite San Francisco icons such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, and the Ferry Building - as well as a variety of small works.
The textiles created by Charlotte Cook-Fuller, the artist's mother, originally were created as a collaboration: paired paintings and textiles of favorite San Francisco locations. Their first joint exhibit, Point, Counterpoint: San Francisco Through the Eyes of Charlotte Cook-Fuller and Lynette Cook, was held at Evergreen Museum & Library in Baltimore, MD in 2015. This was followed by the Stereopticon exhibition at Stanford Art Spaces (2016), also a two-person show. Charlotte then had a solo exhibit of her textiles at the UCSF Women's Health Center as part of the Serenity: Extraordinary exhibition. Following this came a joint show at the San Bruno Library in San Bruno, CA and participation in Art Comes Alive 2022 at ADC Fine Art in Cincinnati, OH, where the pair titled "All in a Row" received Best in Show Runner-Up. 2023 exhibitions include a 2-person show at the Napa Library in August.
Go to http://extrasolar.spaceart.org/space.html to see Cook's astronomical illustrations.
For a selection of Cook's astronomical paintings available for sale, click here.