Lydia Cooley Freeman
Lydia Cooley Freeman was born in 1907 in Tacoma, Washington. She grew up in Southern California where she began her art studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. Later, in New York, she attended the Art Students’ League and studied with John Sloan and Harry Wicky. She married Don Freeman in 1932 in New York, but continued to use her maiden name (Cooley) when signing her paintings. Her work has been exhibited at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and at the Santa Barbara Musuem of Art. She co-authored two children’s books with Don: Chuggy and the Blue Caboose and Pet of the Met. She also illustrated books by other authors, including Wind in My Hand by Hanako Fukuda and Onion Journey by Julia Cunningham (using her maiden name Lydia Cooley). She continued to paint until her death in 1998 in Zurich, Switzerland.
(Roy Freeman, last update: April, 2010)