Lindy Cook Severns
Midlothian, TX
A native Texan, I'm passionate about nature, and I paint what I live, one sunset at a time.
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Lindy Cook Severns paints southwestern landscapes, wildlife and flora on location and in her studio.
The contemporary Texas artist grew up drawing and painting. She began selling her landscape paintings in galleries and painting commissioned portraits after graduation from Texas Tech University with a BA in English/Biology. A fourth-degree black belt in taekwondo, she a ran a family-oriented martial arts studio for many years and found the mental discipline and hand-eye coordination of martial arts spilled over into her painting. A licensed pilot before her marriage, Lindy flew first officer on a corporate jet beside her pro pilot husband Jim for almost two decades. Thousands of hours at 41,000 feet gave the aviatrix/artist an insider's understanding of the dramatic skies that color many of her paintings today.
Lindy is a seventh generation Texan, a Mayflower and Jamestown descendant. Frontiers are in her blood, and her landscapes are authentic views of remote places in the wild American west, high desert ranch country, the Chihuahuan Desert, Big Bend National Park. Through her paintings, she shares central Texas and hill country, the majesty of the Rockies and the alluring magic of Taos and Santa Fe. The adventurous artist usually paints from her photos of the couple's travels, while some smaller pastels are done on location, en plein air.
In 2004, the couple quit their jobs and began a new life adventure. They sold their custom-built Lubbock, Texas home of 26 years and bought big RV. Then, they set out to see America the slow way, traveling backroads instead of jet routes. Ranch country mountains near remote Fort Davis and Marfa snared them, and they spent 20 years waking each morning at 6000 feet above some of the most majestic scenery in West Texas. After years of jet-setting and checking into an endless succession of luxury hotels, the couple embraced the uncluttered lifestyle and comfort of being "home" wherever they traveled in the RV.
While the Severns now enjoy the comforts of a more conventional home in Midlothian, Texas. Lindy still immerses herself in nature. She so intimately knows a landscape before she paints it, she is critically acclaimed for her "sense of place".
Lindy Cook Severns art hangs in most every state in the USA and in collections in England, Australia, Germany and Canada. Selected as one of 35 artists for the definitive book TEXAS TRADITIONS, CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS OF THE LONE STAR STATE (McGarry and Duty 2010), she is also featured in a 2016 PBS documentary on creativity, WESTERN PERSPECTIVES.
Lindy is the 2020 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award for the College of Arts and Sciences of Texas Tech University.
Lindy and Jim enjoy the companionship of a fiercely loyal rescued Lhasa Apso / terrier and a cranky African Grey parrot who passionately loves art. She is represented by Old Spanish Trail Gallery and Museum , a unique art space on a working ranch outside Fort Davis, Texas. She also hangs art at The V6 Collection of the Gage Hotel in Marathon and Vise in Alpine and sells cards, prints and original art through her online gallery.
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Statement
As a southwest landscape painter, my office is wherever I glimpse a wildflower or see the sun rise, wherever I watch clouds build or sunset color the land. Some paintings are born of my reference photos and completed in my studio. Others, I paint en plein air, on location. Regardless of where I create it, every artwork is inspired by a hike, drive, or living what I paint. My landscape paintings are real places, vistas I've experienced; my wildlife drawings are portraits of neighboring critters; I carefully draw the wildflowers that bloom beside my hiking boots. I constantly look for magic: magnificence in the mundane.
My husband Jim says that when I paint a big, dramatic sky, I'm channeling all those years I spent banking thru clouds in a jet. There's truth in that: I know those skies as intimately as I know the high desert of Far West Texas. When I paint a sky, I feel the wind pulling at my hair. I want you to feel that, too.
Whether I'm painting in oils, watercolors or with soft pastels, I use strong compositions and rich colors. I want my landscapes to carry across the room, to take your breath away. But I also paint in fine detail, meticulously adding features meant to be enjoyed up close. I want each painting to hold hidden surprises, a series of small delights for my viewers.
Artists are wired with a desire to share the beauty that we perceive so acutely. Whenever I paint, I'm reaching out to You.
In my paintings, I share the joyous freedom of the still-wild frontiers I'm privileged to see, and the silent beauty of the everyday.