Great Summer Reads
June 25, 2026
Artisit Statement
Spreading the Word: Pay Attention is an invitation to slow down, look closer, and become curious. Through watercolor, I preserve moments, places, and stories that deserve to be remembered. Whether a painting is only a few inches wide or fills an entire wall, its size does not determine its significance. Every piece carries equal weight because every story has value.
Each painting is intentionally given a specific title–not simply to identify the artwork, but to encourage viewers to ask questions, seek context, and discover the history behind it. Some titles reference a street, a landmark, a person, or a moment in time. They are meant to be the beginning of a conversation rather than its conclusion.
As an artist, I believe art has the power to spark curiosity, preserve memory, and connect people to places and histories they may have otherwise overlooked. My hope is that these paintings encourage you to pay attention–to the details, to the stories, and to the people who have shaped our communities. Sometimes a single title is enough to inspire a lifetime of discovery.
-Teresa Cook
Meet the Artist
Teresa Cook is born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. She is a self-taught Abstract Architectural Watercolor artist and has been painting watercolor for 13 years. She obtained her BFA from University of North Florida in 2012, in Painting, Drawing, Printmaking. She has a love for architecture, landscapes, and buildings, through her obtained Associates degree in 2007, in Computer Drafting and Design from ITT Tech.
She also creates mini watercolor abstractions using multiple materials, like pastel, gold-leaf and more. Each of her watercolor and ink paintings are created on smooth paper called, “yupo,” are meant to capture a moment in time without the interruption of people. You will not see much human interaction within her art, unless it is her portraiture art like her, “James Baldwin Smoking”.
Over the last 10 years, she has been traveling to different countries as well as around her native city. She recently traveled to Amsterdam for the 2019 Urban Sketchers Symposium (USK Symposium), and then Puerto Rico in 2021. She recently displayed her art in the Ritz Theatre, “See Jacksonville: Past and Present,” the Cummer Museum, “Women’s Rights Movement,” and recently at the Turner Arts Center, in Valdosta, Georgia, “See Jacksonville X Valdosta.”
She is an Art Instructor with Duval County Schools, Cathedral Arts Project, and local places her in Jacksonville, plus her workshops are currently held at MOCA, Cultivate, First Coast Cultural Center, Zoom, and privately in her “Back Porch Studio”. You can also catch her at the Riverside Arts Market with her other business, “MINIS in my MINI,” her tiny art in the back of her white MINI Cooper.
