Virtual Exhibit and Online Artist Talk with Watercolor Artist Kelly Cook
Memory in Motion: Kelly Cook Watercolors
Virtual Exhibition:
August 1-September 26, 2025
Join us for an Online Artist Talk
Tuesday, August 19 at 11 am Central/12 pm Eastern
By Krishna Adams, Director of Visual Arts, Craft, Media, and Design –
Memphis native Kelly Cook has built a career combining her artistic practice with art education, and her journey reflects a commitment to both personal expression and creative mentorship within the local arts community.
Cook earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Memphis College of Art in 2015, a master’s degree in fine arts in 2018 and a master of arts in teaching in art education in 2023, both from the University of Memphis.
Her work, grounded in the figurative tradition, explores memory, identity and movement through watercolor, a medium she began to explore more deeply in college under the guidance of instructor Veda Reed. Reed, who Cook said continued to be her mentor and friend after graduation, taught at Memphis College of Art for more than 30 years and was honored with a Tennessee Governor’s Art Award in 1996.
“Her advice meant a lot to me,” Cook said. “Watercolor has this breathing quality. It’s immediate and transparent, just like people.”
That transparency has become a central metaphor in Cook’s work. In her layered portraits, she uses watercolor to overlay different poses of a figure, echoing both time and motion. See the exhibition here.
“When painting in translucent layers, there is visual evidence of memory,” she said. “The initial pose is never forgotten but preserved under succeeding layers.”
When the pandemic began in 2020, Cook used the time in her studio to experiment with shaped birch plywood panels as a surface for her paintings. In works like “We Call Her Mrs. Conway,” Cook captures her subject in mid-gesture, with multiple overlapping figures suggesting motion, conversation and time. The bright pink tones, hand-cut wood and layers of watercolor reflect her ability to merge drawing, sculpture and painting.
Recently, Cook has begun exploring self-portraiture and her connection to the natural world.
“For the last few years, I have been focused on other people. Now I’m starting to ask, ‘Where do I fit into this?’” she said. She frequently sketches while hiking, bringing a meditative quality to her new work and seeking artist residencies to explore this next chapter.
The piece “Sketchbook Studies for Nature Patterns” offers an introspective exploration of self-portraiture, showing how Cook is beginning to weave the natural world into her figurative practice. Rendered in watercolor and mixed media, the faces are partially obscured or overlaid with organic patterns resembling bark, petals or stone.
“I’ve started thinking about rocks, moss and trees within the land as a timestamp of its story, just as our bodies show timestamps of our journeys,” Cook said. “Being able to meld the two provides those subtle distortions in the figure that I really enjoy creating, while simultaneously thinking about where I’ve been and where my body has taken me.”
When not in the studio, Cook is in the classroom. She is a full-time visual arts specialist at St. Mary’s Episcopal School. She also served as an adjunct painting and drawing instructor at the University of Memphis from 2016 to 2025. She previously taught at Christian Brothers University and Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova, Tennessee, and has privately tutored students across the Mid-South.
Cook’s experience with students of different ages informs her studio practice.
“Elementary students are fearless,” she said. “They don’t worry about messing up. They’re really into the process of making, and that’s exciting.”
This sense of unguarded creativity fueled her encouragement of experimentation in her university classes.
“College students made me think more deeply about why I do what I do,” she added. “Their questions helped me clarify my own intentions.”
Throughout her career, Cook has exhibited widely in Tennessee and beyond, with shows in Kentucky, Missouri, Colorado and Arkansas. Her accolades include the RiverARTS Fest Scholarship in 2017, the Presidential Purchase Award from the University of Memphis in 2018 and recognition as a semifinalist in the 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
Please join us for an online artist talk Tuesday, August 19 at 12pm Central/11am Eastern. Visit Cook’s website to learn more about her other works.
