Paul Rodda Cook

     Paul Rodda Cook, 1897-1972, a muralist, and painter of portraits, landscapes and still-lifes, was born in Salinas, Kansas. His family moved to Uvalde, Texas when he was 7 years old. It took some time for Cook to realize that he wanted to be an artist. He first studied law at the University of Texas, Austin, leaving school for Massachusetts, where he took a job, obviously marking time, in sales for a tanning company. He was saved by an illness that sent him back to San Antonio, where he began his art studies with Hugo David Pohl, then to Taos, New Mexico, with well-known artists Walter Ufer and Leon Gaspard. When Cook began his art studies, he did so with a fixity of purpose, continuing in Boston with Hermann Dudley Murphy, and in Woodstock, New York, with Charles Rosen, Lowell Birge Harrison, and Henry Lee McFee.

     Paul Cook moved to Boerne, Texas, near San Antonio, from 1928 until the early 1940s, then to Taxco de Alarcon, Mexico. From 1949-1971, he lived in Houston, then moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Cook died in a Mexico City hospital, and was brought back to the United States for burial in Houston.

     Cook was a member of the San Antonio Art League; Southern States Art League; Villita Street Gallery, San Antonio; American Artists Professional League; and New York Watercolor Society.

     His work may be found in the collections of the South Texas Institute for the Arts, Corpus Christi; Stark Museum of Art, Orange; Groos National Bank, and Witte Museum, San Antonio; San Antonio Art League; Carnegie Library, Waco; and John H. Vanderpoel Art Association, Chicago.