About
Artist Biography
My goal is to make your eyes sing and heart dance.
LaShonda Cooks is a Dallas-based artist and writer who loves exploring cultural norms, identity and beauty through words and images. She received her BS from Babson College in 2010.
While there Cooks, the daughter of an art teacher, balanced her business education with her life-long interest in the arts, by working in the college’s ceramic studio and exploring color in glaze and underglaze tiles. Those color studies birthed her signature pointillist painting style that features short fluid strokes and multiple layers of colors.
Over the past decade, Cooks has partnered with local cultural centers to increase access to the arts by creating and hosting artsy workshops for all ages. Her work has been featured in the Dallas Mayor's Office, Forest Theater, 500X Gallery, Moody Performance Hall, Latino Cultural Center, St. Matthews Cathedral's Sundermann Gallery, African American Museum of Dallas, MUCE Miami Campus, Hollister Gallery at Babson College, Beacon Gallery, Boston City Hall, Illamar Galeria in Peru and the Chateau D’Orquevaux Residency in France. She is thrilled to be a 2025 Carter Community Artist for the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. Cooks is honored to be an inaugural 2024-2025 Dallas Museum of Art Junior Associates McDermott Fellow.
Her work is part of the Chateau d'Orquevaux International Artists & Writers Collection, Jennifer Cowley Collection, Missy Burton and Greg Young Collection, Meshack Collection, Gillespie Collection, Bass Family Art Collection and a growing part of private and public collections across the U.S.
Art is my mirror, my medicine and my safe space.
Artist Statement
My work is a love song to myself, my family, my community and my culture. I began creating while studying Business in college as a therapeutic escape but also as a mirror into my world. I love exploring beauty, cultural norms and identity as well as the construction of power and privilege.
I like playing with paintings ranging from a few inches to entire walls on materials ranging from traditional canvas to raw wood to plates. Portraiture is my specialty. Capturing the light and darks and shadows of a broad spectrum of humanity including my own helps me understand what makes us all tick and the energy beneath the surface. I use layers of vibrant colors in a mix of pointillistic and impressionist strokes to store movement and memory in each piece.