Jacob Cooley

Artist Bio

“Travelling enables me to see past the familiar North Carolina landscape. The cool minimalism of the California coast, the rigorously horizontal New Mexican desert or the humid, sultry wetlands of Southern Louisiana. Seeing these diverse landscapes brings new energy to my paintings of my home state. A new sense of space and light and color.”

Born in 1968, in Sydney, Australia, Jacob Cooley has lived most of his life in North Carolina.  He received his BFA from the University of Georgia, Athens in 1990 and in 1993 he received his MFA in painting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Cooley also studied at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio from 1986-88.  Cooley began showing his works in exhibitions in 1989 and continues to show nationally. His work is in collections such as the Nasher Museum of the Arts, the Kennan Institute of the Arts, the SAS Institute, as well as many private and public collections throughout the East Coast. Jacob currently lives and works in Durham, North Carolina.