Catie Cook USA
"Through the strangeness of a drape of fabric or illusion of stage lighting, there is a lingering reminder that my characters are performing for your gaze —- a feeling so emblematic of the female experience." - Catie Cook
Catie Cook is a painter raised in Gainesville, Georgia, whose work draws from the visual culture of the American South, including church pageantry, debutante traditions, and beauty pageants. Influenced by her background as the daughter of a scenic designer, her paintings adopt the language of theater, where drapery, lighting, and composition create scenes that feel both carefully constructed and subtly artificial. Figures and animals are staged within these environments, emphasizing the act of being seen and the tension between presentation and authenticity.
Central to Cook’s work is the Dalmatian, a recurring motif that parallels systems of display, control, and expectation. Positioned within composed interiors and landscapes, these animals echo the pressures of appearance and refinement, reflecting broader ideas around gender, beauty, and performance. Drawing from references that range from 1950s film to contemporary visual culture, Cook builds images that balance precision with unease, where polished surfaces and idealized forms reveal the structures beneath them.
Working across staged, theatrical compositions, Catie Cook examines themes of performance, identity, and constructed environments through a distinctly Southern lens. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia, where she studied painting, art history, and museum studies, and earned her Master of Fine Arts from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
Cook’s paintings are shaped by the visual traditions of church, debutante culture, and beauty pageantry, as well as her early exposure to scenic design. This influence is evident in her use of theatrical elements such as draped fabric, staged lighting, and controlled compositions that mimic the structure of a set. Her work often incorporates animals, particularly Dalmatians, as recurring subjects that reflect systems of display, status, and expectation. These figures are placed within carefully constructed environments that emphasize both surface and illusion, creating images that feel precise yet unsettled.
Her work has been exhibited across the East Coast and Midwest, including presentations at Future Fair in New York City, the Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, and Blah Blah Gallery in Philadelphia. Professionally, Cook has worked as a mural painter for Color The World Bright, an intern in the education department at the Georgia Museum of Art, and an assistant curator at the Quinlan Visual Arts Center. At Washington University, she served as a Teaching Assistant in the Foundations Department and as a member of the Director’s Advisory Committee for the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.
Notably, Cook created a master copy of Vincent van Gogh’s Stairway at Auvers as part of an accessibility initiative for visually impaired museum visitors, which is now held in the education collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum. She is the recipient of the Laura and William Jens Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis and was awarded the 2025 Graduate Thesis Production Grant.
