Landscape | Chris Cook Artist

Yielding:

“Every cloud has a silver lining”

“No rain, no rainbow”

“It can’t rain forever”

“It’s always darkest before the dawn”

Eventually, bad things have to give in and yield to the good. The sun will eventually cut through even the thickest clouds, flowers will emerge where the soil once looked barren and empty.

Chris paints this picture to reveal a beautiful sky behind a large mass of dark grey clouds. To me, it serves as a great reminder that no matter what life throws our way, better things are to come. Furthermore, the beautiful and bright sky was always there, but our vision is often hindered by the presence of the clouds overhead.

My encouragement to each of you, myself included, is to not lose sight of the fact that, one day, evil will yield to good, and great things will be in store for all who believe.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.

John 1:5

Chris Cook is a premier southern artist and owner of Madison Studios, a web design, maintenance, and e-commerce and marketing company. For his artist biography, contact information, or to view more of his work, click HERE

Abandoned Peach Orchard

Georgia is the peach state.

Peaches are one of my favorite fruits.

Spring is right around the corner…Fruit trees are starting to bloom.

This is a picture of a peach orchard, long after the fruit was gone; the limbs litter the ground, and the birds have taken up their posts as sentries. Gone are the glorious and beautiful flowers; no longer are the limbs laden with the heavy burden of sweet and juicy peaches.

As spring approaches, I am reminded again about how God works things in cycles. If one were to look at this snapshot of these peach trees without knowledge or foresight about the cyclical changes that all things go through, they might feel discouraged. The glorious truth for those of us who know is that God has a perfect plan. While things seem to be dead, bleak, and empty, there are beautiful flowers and sweet fruit waiting to be seen and enjoyed.

Lent reminds us of the time that things seemed bleak and empty for the world. Jesus was nailed to a tree, and laid in a borrowed tomb. All seemed lost, but, as is always the case in God’s timing, there was a much sweeter and glorious plan at work for each of us.

Barns, Barns, Barns…

Tennessee Barns: 1 through 5.

Why paint the same picture 5 times? Good Question. As I was about the finish Tennessee Barn #1, I was really liking the way it looked compositionally and the color scheme as well, but, I had an idea for another color pallet that I “could have used”. I pulled out a second blank canvas the same size and roughed in the same composition and left it there while finishing the first.

I thought about Monet, and how he painted the hay stack picture over and over again – using roughly the same composition, point of view… but at different times of day to get different light. What a marvelous idea… but he painted those paintings “En plein air” that is a French expression that means “in the open air,” and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors (on the spot).

Unfortunately, I was painting this in my art studio in Madison, Georgia while that barn is sitting in a sharp curve in the road just outside of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I had made a quick photo on my iPhone from the side of the road years ago, so I could not observe the barn at different times of day – I abandoned that idea and went with “I could have painted this in a different color pallet idea” that I had originally.

I repeated this idea until I had exhausted color pallets I felt were appropriate for this subject. Now I have a wonderful set of five paintings of the same subject if someone wanted to make a grouping on their wall, or a nice set of different color paintings of the same subject to suit someone’s idea of “I like those colors”.

I went on to paint another barn from Blowing Rock, North Carolina two times with two different color pallets. You will just have to go to my website to see those.

Enjoy,

Chris Cook

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Landscape in the evening

I find this picture captivating. Moreover, I love that it was created using a computer program. Art is a beautiful thing, and technology is a wonderful tool that we can use to create words, ideas, tools, images, and items that help us in our daily lives.

If there’s one thing that I have learned in my time working for Madison Studios is that, when it comes to the internet, nothing is really what it seems. The picture, font, slideshow, movie, etc. that we see and enjoy on our favorite website is really just the product of a series of characters assembled in a language called HTML that tells our computers to show us what we see. The “back end” of a website would be very much like looking at the back side of a woven or stitched tapestry; the seemingly chaotic stream of randomness and disarray, all pointing to the bigger picture on the other side.

This painting, for example, is the sum of countless clicks, swipes, and passes over a digital pad that communicated a vision from Chris’ mind through his hands into a computer, that took that information and assembled it into a visual signal that we are able to interpret as this beautiful work of art. I realize that this is quite possibly an over-complication of the creative process, but I can not help but to be in awe of everything that goes into the creative process of so much that we enjoy these days.

Chris is a master craftsman of both visual images and websites. He has an eye for creativity and development unlike many of his peers. What a blessing it is for us to be able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Train in Landscape

Trains have always fascinated me. There is just something magical and captivating about tons and tons of steel, cargo, and motor, chugging along two iron rails all across the country. The familiar whine of the horn as it plows through crossings, the hisses, clacks, and thumps as it moves on down the line. There is also something special to think that there is typically only 2-3 people on board, responsible for moving, and more importantly stopping, all of that cargo across the country.

I’m sure that technology has changed a lot about the how, why, and when trains move their cargo from place to place, but little can be done to decrease the fascination and grandeur factor that come with seeing trains go by…

This painting is a print of an original that Chris made. I love that artists are able to create prints of beautiful works that they are sure many people would love and appreciate, rather than limiting us to single copies of their creations. This painting is sure to appeal to lovers of trains, landscape paintings, and fine art alike. I really like it.

Cotton – Chris Cook – Southern Artist

After the “Snowpacolypse 2014”, I drove by a cotton field that had recently been combined and had bales of the white stuff lying on the field’s edges. The funny thing was, because of the snow, the field looked like it was ripe for the picking all over agin. It’s funny how two very different “white and fluffy” substances can both make such a tremendous impact on the southern landscape.

Cotton has been a staple crop of southern states, and the source of numerous resources for textile, paper, farming, cooking, and livestock production for years and years. Bostwick, GA houses a working cotton gin that most local students are fortunate enough to tour at least once during their tenure in Morgan County Schools. In doing so, they are able to pay an homage to the crop that helped to pave the way for the prosperity that many people in this area enjoy today.

I feel like this painting does a good job of capturing several characteristics of cotton. The dimensions and textures of the paint strokes in white help to give reference to the fluffiness of cotton. Chris also uses very dark earth tones juxtaposed against the bright white of the cotton balls. This is a stark reminder of what it looks like to ride by a field of cotton in the late fall. The fields are full of white fluffy pillows of cotton, right for the picking.

Cotton can be quite a controversial topic for discussion here in these parts, but there is no denying that it has made, and continues to make a tremendous impact on our world, as it is truly is “the fabric of our lives”.

Ice Storm

Ice, Ice, Baby….Old Jack frost is nipping at us again this week…

Chris classifies himself as a “Southern Christian Artist”. Those three words say a great deal. Here in the South, winters are typically brief, mild times of cool and cloudy days, dotted with occasional bitter cold days and the ever elusive flurry of snow. If we get “winter weather” here in Georgia, it is typically in the form of ice and/or sleet. Seldom do we really get any accumulation of snow.

In this painting, Chris depicts a field of land that has been “impacted” by the ice storm. He shows us the sparse patches of snow left on the ground. I can almost imagine the water-logged ground squishing beneath my feet as I look at this painting.

Its funny how most of our “damage” from winter storms comes from the fact that it rains, things get wet, and then it’ll get cold enough for things to ice over and get really nasty. It’s a curse of living in such a mild and temperate part of the country. It’s also interesting to assess the dynamic of how our society is impacted by the presence of snow, ice, or any other “winter weather”.

What do your and yours do to prepare for/endure winter weather? What are your memories of snow and ice storms here in the south? Share them in the comments below.

Night Cabin:

I am a “Mountain Person”. If you read the previous blog about mountains at dusk, you’ll understand my opinion about the two types of people in this world (beach and mountain). Which one are you?

When I say that I am a mountain person, I do not mean that I don’t like sitting on the beach, watching the waves roll in and breathing in the salt air. What I do mean is that there truly is no substitute for a few days, or even several hours spent in the crisp, clean mountain air. Many of my favorite memories from trips and vacations involved being in or around mountain streams, cabins, and campfires with the people that I love. There’s really nothing quite like being there.

Two memories in particular permeate my mind as I think about my fond memories of mountains. One is a time that I spent with a few close friends hiking on the Appalachian Trail. I can remember one of the clearest nights of my lifetime, sitting by the glow of a fire and staring across the gap at one of the most vast expanses of stars that I can remember. The other is a weekend retreat that my family took to a cabin in the North Georgia mountains. I can still remember sleeping in the loft, walking through the rustling leaves down by the creek, and the crisp feeling of the air on that weekend.

When I look at this painting by Chris, I find peace in my memories and thoughts of time in the mountains. I think that he does a very good job of composing this image. As a “mountain person” I take delight in all of the mountain elements that he brought into this picture. I love the glint of snow, the halo over the clouds from the bright moon, the towering trees, and the cool creek that is running beside the cozy cabin.

His art, regardless of the subject matter or style, seems to inspire emotion and evoke memories and feeling. I really like this painting because of the way that it makes me feel. Maybe i’m partial, but it really does make me feel good when I look at it.

Storm Clouds Rolling In

There’s nothing quite like getting to sit in a place where you can watch a storm roll in. Being able to see, smell, and hear the rain, lightning, thunder, as well as feeling the change in pressure and temperature is a truly awesome experience.

One of the perks of Madison’s location in the state is that we are relatively flat, and therefore we can typically see weather patterns rolling in from quite some distance. Chris took the opportunity to capture some storm clouds in this original painting on paper. As I look at it, I can almost imagine that i’m in a field in the summertime, maybe even hitting a swimming hole. I see the clouds in this painting, and can almost begin to feel the cooler air stirring and hear the faint rumble of thunder as the storm rolls on in.

Weather is one of those strange things about memories. So often, a specific time of year will have it’s own specific feeling, smell, and sights that all help to influence what we remember about different times. Take, for instance, the difference between a pop up shower in the spring, that might leave the air smelling of fresh flowers and cut grass, versus the steamy smell of post rain asphalt on a sunny summer day, or the crispness and almost dusty smell of wet leaves that accompanies a storm in the later months of fall.

Weather, like so much of our lives, factors greatly into how and what we remember about places, times, and events in our stories. This is just one snapshot from Chris’ memory banks, but it is one that I can relate to, and identify with as well.

Yellow House – Madison, GA

The homes in Madison, GA are some of the most classically beautiful, and well maintained that I have seen in my lifetime. Many of them are Antebellum, and date back to the days of the Civil War and before. Several are plantation style, and have servant’s quarters in the back yards. It’s like a little piece of history, preserved forever here in my home town.

Growing up, I took the beauty of Madison for granted. I had the typical teenager complaint of being bored, and “having nothing to do”, citing arguments like “we need a bowling alley where the old Ingles used to be”, and “if we could just get a movie theatre”. Now that I am somewhat older, I appreciate the preserved beauty that is within the Historic District of Madison.

Chris does a fantastic job of capturing not only the beauty of this yellow home, but of the gorgeous landscaping and foliage that surround many of the homes in our community. This is another one of the images that Chris created with his digital painting program. He uses the tablet to “paint” the colors onto the page. While the yellow of the house is definitely prominent in this painting, I can not help but to be drawn to the beauty of the flowers, trees, and bushes around it.

I think that it is a great testament to Chris’ ability to be able to capture this home in such a realistic manner as to draw the viewer to feel and experience the landscaping around this gorgeous yellow house. There really is something special about Madison, it’s homes, and the feeling that they inspire. Chris captures all of those in this painting.