Tammra Cook is a folk artist who shares memories and stories of favorite places through her paintings. By focusing on daily life and familiar scenes she uses brush strokes and paint to express her vision of the beauty found in everyday surroundings. While her love for Impressionistic painting influences her painterly skies and backgrounds, she is also known for including highly detailed buildings and objects as well as her Basset hound, Major, on the canvas to create unique and interesting folk scenes. Cook creates work based upon real life, memory and her imagination and viewers are often drawn into the brightly colored paintings, experiencing a lyrical sense of peacefulness, happiness and hope.
Tammra has loved creating art since childhood. She credits her high school art teacher, George Benedict, for encouraging her to accept and pursue her passion, and thanks her family and husband for ceaselessly supporting her pursuits. Cook received her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Colgate University, which included studying abroad one summer in Paris and four months in London. She later earned Master’s degree in Art Education from Adelphi University. She has created and sold her own style of folk-art paintings, pet and house portraits, as well as wood carvings for four decades. Cook grew up in central New York and currently lives in Charlton, Massachusetts. She is an elementary school art teacher, and when at home, she enjoys creating artwork in her studio and working in her gardens.
