Lynette Cook crafts exquisite acrylic paintings of local urban landscapes that read as so crisply and compellingly real that at least one visitor to Andra Norris Gallery, in Burlingame, refused to believe that he was seeing a painting, not a digitally printed photograph. Cook’s modestly sized acrylics depict San Francisco buildings, often located in Chinatown, landscapes that have both visual interest and meaning for the artist, who carefully edits her photos before transferring the projected contours onto vellum and then to her gessoed canvas or panel.. While she largely adheres to the selected source photos, she does make changes to improve the compositions, and to include other elements, including silhouetted trees in window panes, which elicit spatial ambiguity: is the tree behind the facade we’re facing, or a reflection of something behind us? Other paintings contain subtle social commentary; the constructed world reflects its culture.
Curated by DeWitt Cheng
Stairway to Heaven by Lynette Cook