This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born in Tacoma, Washington on January 13, 1906, Lydia Cooley, by the 1930s, had settled in New York City where she studied at the Art Students League under John Sloan. Her portraits of women, children and the working class are of the Ash Can school and show the influence of her teacher, John Sloan. While there, she met her husband-to-be, graphic artist and children's book author Don Freeman. She co-authored several of her husband's children’s books (Chuggy and the Blue Caboose, Pet of the Met) and illustrated two children’s books (Onion Journey by Julia Cunningham, and Wind in My Hand by Hanako Fukuda).
The couple moved to Santa Barbara in 1958. After her husband's death in 1978, Mrs. Freeman moved to Switzerland in 1988. She continued to paint up to 6 months before she died at the age of 92. She changed her style radically, drawing nightly small, very beautiful and personal abstract sketches, and working on a book of illustrations to her own haikus that had been set to music by a pianist friend of hers.
Lydia Freeman died on Aug. 5, 1998 in Zurich, Switzerland.
Exhibitions::
Society of Independent Artists (NYC), 1934-43;
Whitney Museum (NYC), 1936, 1938, 1941;
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
| Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Death record; additional information courtesy of the artist's son, Roy Freeman
| | Nearly 20,000 biographies can be found in Artists in California 1786-1940 by Edan Hughes and is available for sale ($150). For a full book description and order information please click here. |
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