Biography

Kevin Cook is an accomplished landscape painter whose style is strongly influenced by Hudson River School artists of the nineteenth century. He has been named a Painting Fellow by the New York Foundation for the Arts and subsequently served on NYFA’s Artists’ Advisory Committee. In 2009, Kevin’s work was exhibited at the American Consulate in Hong Kong as part of the Artists In Embassies program. Kevin has been a guest educator at the Samuel Dorsky Museum in New Paltz.

Kevin is from a rural community surrounded by farms and gentle woodlands in New York’s Hudson Valley. His love for painting began with a favorite childhood art teacher and began to take shape along with his growing appreciation for the natural world around him.

Kevin attended the State University of New York at New Paltz, gaining a B.S. in Art Education (1980). It was there that he discovered the work of the Hudson River School, as well as that of the English Romanticist John Constable, and felt an immediate identification with their work and ideals. This was unusual at a time when abstract expressionism filled galleries.

Kevin’s vision of nature and romanticism matured while employed at the Mohonk Mountain House, a Victorian resort located in New Paltz. Mohonk’s storied past and the surrounding Shawangunk Mountains’ rugged terrain deeply inspired Kevin, and he gradually developed his style of painting as a means of communicating his spiritual connection to this landscape.

Kevin exhibits extensively and is represented by a number of galleries. He has a strong regional following.