Special Projects & Interviews
Lynette Cook pursued her longtime interests of science and art by double majoring in Biology and Drawing & Painting at the Mississippi University for Women. After completing Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees, she moved West to the California College of the Arts, specializing in scientific illustration and graduating with a Master of Fine Arts.
Internships in the Exhibits and Invertebrate Zoology departments at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco led to the staff job of Artist/Photographer for the Morrison Planetarium, a position she held for sixteen years. Lynette then worked as Senior Illustrator for OneCosmos Network, after which her freelance art business expanded to full time.
Botanical and biological imagery comprised much of the Artist's early freelance work, with clients including
Fine Cooking, Houghton Mifflin, Random House, and
RN. Product illustration included note cubes for The Nature Company and the Food for Thought posters titled
Periodic Table of the Fishes,
Periodic Table of Rare and Endangered Species, and
Chocolate.
Today Lynette is best known for her paintings of exoplanets, several of which have accompanied discovery press releases. Her work on this subject began in 1995, following the announcement the first confirmed extrasolar planet orbiting a sunlike star, 51 Pegasi b. She now has a sizeable collection of such artwork to her credit. These, and other astronomical pieces, have been presented throughout the world in books, periodicals, and documentaries published/produced by
Astronomy, BBC Television, bild der wissenschaft (Germany),
CNN, Cosas (Peru),
The Discovery Channel, Eos (Belgium),
Japan Public Television, The Learning Channel, PBS, Science et Vie (France),
Science News, Sky & Telescope, Time, and
US News & World Report, among others. Lynette's original artwork has been exhibited across the United States as well.
The Artist's method is to consult with astronomers, often the discoverers themselves, and learn what these worlds might look like. She then creates a painting based on the known data and may also incorporate scientifically plausible elements such as moons and planetary rings.
Originally, Lynette used the computer to develop color roughs for her images and created the finished art traditionally with a mixed media technique of acrylic gouache, colored pencil, and acrylic airbrush paint. Today, most of her science illustration is produced digitally. She continues to explore traditional media via her fine art and teaching.
Infinite Worlds: An Illustrated Voyage to Planets Beyond Our Sun, is the Artist's most involved project to date. Co-authored with Ray Villard, this book presents nearly seventy of Lynette's images, many featuring exoplanets and life in space.
Lynette is a Fellow of the
International Association of Astronomical Artists.
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