County Executive’s Office

Mother and Daughter Duo Celebrate San Francisco

featuring artworks by Lynette Cook and Charlotte Cook-Fuller

The Caldwell Gallery, November and December 2023

ARTISTS’ STATEMENT

My mother, Charlotte Cook-Fuller, has championed my art career since childhood, accompanying me on many photo expeditions to find reference material for my realist artwork. I’ve valued her input, for she is creatively accomplished herself: she made many of the clothes for the family and decorated the home by refinishing furniture and making bedspreads, curtains, and tablecloths.

In 2013 I remarked offhandedly, “Maybe we should collaborate!” While that struck Mother as a curious idea, she was ready for a new challenge. Already she had created several textile wall hangings that held places of honor in my house, my sister’s, and her own. Furthermore, San Francisco remained her favorite city despite her lifelong wanderlust and international travel.

We chose favorite San Francisco scenes – photographs that one of us had taken – and each created works based on the same images: mine as acrylic on canvas and Mother’s as a fabric wall hanging. Our resulting paired works first led to two-person exhibitions at Johns Hopkins Evergreen Museum & Library in Baltimore, MD (2015), and at Stanford Art Spaces in Palo Alto, CA (2016).  More recent opportunities include my Mother's solo exhibition at the UCSF Women's Health Center in San Francisco (2019) and the Art Comes Alive 2022 exhibition at ADC Fine Art in Cincinnati, OH, where our pair titled "All in a Row" received Runner-Up to the Best in Show. In August (2023) we exhibited at the Napa County Library.

I live in Daly City, CA, and Mother lives near Baltimore, MD. Prior to Covid-19 we shared the creative process during visits. When the pandemic suspended travel plans, we continued by sharing JPEGs via e-mail along with telephone and ZOOM chats.

This art collection is an expression of the varying choices available to and made by women of different generations. The creative streak that my mother and I share was apparent in the paintings that my great grandmother, Adeline Larkin Regan, created around the late 1800s. Her emerging talent was cut short: Adeline's new husband didn't want her to paint once they were married and she gave it up.

My mother, in turn, was a homemaker during my early childhood. During her 40s, she went on to get her PhD, and then began a teaching career at Towson University. In time she became a full Professor. As with the handiwork of most women, the thousands of hours attributed to this labor over her lifetime seldom have been seen and appreciated outside the confines of the home. As for me, I feel that I am living the life that Adeline did not have. Choosing neither marriage nor children, I have been able to put my art first and to find out what experiences that decision would bring.