In Bob Cooley’s cramped office, there are paintings and sketches of flowers and underwater pebbles reflecting sunlight. There are watercolors and mountain panoramas. But the view out the window is of an Ohio Street parking lot.
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Cooley goes on lots of vacations. While skiing in the Alps or relaxing in a Wisconsin cabin, he takes photographs that he uses to make sketches for his paintings.
“When I’m not working, I paint. If the phone doesn’t ring and I don’t have any commercial work, I take out the watercolors.”
“I’m committed to the city, but I love the rural areas,” says Johnson, as she works on an etching plate. She has been etching natural subjects for eight years. Her work was recently exhibited at the North Lakeside Cultural Center and has taken first-place honors in neighborhood shows in Andersonville and Rogers Park, and at the Indian Boundary and Garfield Farm art fairs.
“The artists here have a real passion for nature and wildlife,” says Marj McCabe, who manages the shop One Touch of Nature in Andersonville where the works of Cooley and Johnson are on sale. (Cooley has a one-man show opening there in July.) “Some people have enough money to go out and buy a cabin. But if you can’t afford a cabin, you can come in here and buy one of their pictures.”
