The artist Trahern Cook - photo by Perry McLeod
Trahern Cook was born in 1970 in Columbia, SC and has been drawing and painting and telling stories his entire life. In 1987 he attended The SC Governors School for the Arts as a visual artist and in 1992 he graduated from Ringling College of Art and Design with a focus on Illustration. He married his wife Lori in 1994 and they moved to Murfreesboro, TN where their two children were born n the late 1990s. Cook worked as a Full time Freelance illustrator from 1993 to the early 2000s and ,in 2006, the family moved back to Columbia, SC. There, Cook took the easel outside and has been painting all over the southeast and abroad ever since.
His work shows in private galleries, homes and work spaces throughout the country.
Cook has coined himself a “Jam Painter” given that so much of his subject matter is musicians of every genre playing everywhere from small taverns to large outdoor festivals. In those moments he explores brush strokes and colors matching the rhythm of the sounds being played.
As a “Live Painter” of events and weddings, Cook creates visual stories of his surroundings in his own unique painterly style, marrying a free folk recklessness with a trained and practiced deliberateness. This performance shares the space with everyone in attendance, enhancing the moment and using the the created vibe to inform the painting itself.
And then there’s the painter and his easel, going anywhere light falls on the buildings, homes, trails and roads of towns, cities and landscapes.
Cook welcomes anyone around to come hang out by the easel.
“It just paints better,” he says.
