Lynn Sharon Cone

Lynn Sharon Cone
Born	(1952-01-10)January 10, 1952 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died	July 23, 2021(2021-07-23) (aged 69) Dayspring, Nova Scotia, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Education	(Diploma) Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, 1976
Known for	Paintings including watercolors, encaustics, and egg tempera, machine-stitching (cotton textile), wood-block printing, papermaking, and conversion of 3-D images into braille
Style	Draughting, theatrical set painting, scenic designing, illustrating, exhibit designing, exhibiting, and braille transcribing

Lynn Sharon Cone (née Hamilton; 10 January 1952 - 23 July 2021) was a Canadian mixed-media visual artist known for her East Coast maritime themes. Her artworks are displayed in private, corporate, and personal collections, as well as in public gallery holdings across both Canada and the United States. Cone's early work contributed to the contemporary Canadian artistic tradition of the 1970s, characterized by a fusion of 'High Realism' with 'Magic Realism'.

Early life and education

Cone grew up in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and spent summers with her grandfather in Blandford, Nova Scotia. She majored in drawing and painting at the Ontario College of Art and Design. In 1982, Cone moved to the South Shore of Nova Scotia with her family, where she worked on art techniques, including hot wax encaustic techniques and egg tempera. She also developed an interest in wood-block printing using paper she made herself. The life of the seashore, its fishers, and her family, who longed to live beside them, all dominated her subject matter.

Art style and inspiration

Cone’s art style combines both High Realism and Magic Realism in Canadian art to complement the American and European practices prevalent during the World Wars. She learned this from Mackenzie and Freifeld, her Toronto mentors. This art type includes watercolor paintings that utilize realistic architectural landscapes to emphasize one place and its relationship to artificial environments.

Cone also used poetic notations to express her feelings about other species. Her encaustic work with zebras “barred with electric tremors through the grass” was based on Roy Campbell’s The Zebras (Campbell, line 7).

She created millennial silk banners for the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History's biodiversity exhibition, which was based on William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence— “To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an Hour” (Blake, lines 1-4). Cone’s husband had a great influence on her, which developed her interest in biological diversity. Her scrapbook explores how she related to other species—sketching how her face could morph into that of a lioness or how the electric brilliance of assorted fish could amaze her and influence the transformation of her color palette.

Exhibitions and work

Exhibitions began with the Maritime Art Association's 41st Annual Exhibition, 1977-1978, a juried show she won; a traveling exhibit featuring "Young Contemporaries" originating from the London Art Gallery (Ontario), 1978.

Lynn then held a solo exhibition titled "Watercolours by Lynn Cone" at the National Exhibition Centre in the John Thurston Clark Memorial Building, Fredericton (New Brunswick) in September 1978.

Two years later, she showcased "New Starters" at Nancy Poole’s Studio off Yorkville Avenue, Toronto, where her artwork was represented. Lynn's depiction of cows was incorporated into the ArtNB collection, supported by a provincial program to heighten public awareness and appreciation of artists and their work. She presented a show on 'Aging' at the Landmark Galleries in Fredericton in June 1980.

In 1980, a traveling solo artist show, "Lynn Cone, Recent Watercolors, 1979-1980," began at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum, Charlottetown (PE). The show ventured from Prince Edward Island to the Atlantic Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

A year later, Cone's exhibition traveled between the Arts and Culture Centre of Stephenville, the Arts and Culture Centre of Gander, the Arts and Culture Centre of Corner Brook, and the Art Gallery of Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Cone unveiled "Eve I'll Teach You Everything I Know," a four-panel artwork featured in Visual Arts Nova Scotia's "The Millennium Show: Far & Wide" (2000). Curated by Pamela Edmonds and presented by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the series also played a significant role in the University College of Cape Breton's Art Gallery show titled "Cultural Memory: The House That Mom Built."

Collections

Cone’s work has been displayed at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery & Museum and Collection Art New Brunswick, Norcen Energy Resources Ltd and in personal collections in California and Canada.

Health issues

In 2000, Cone was diagnosed with arthritis in her hands, and she then turned to a 7-needle sewing machine to produce textile art.

Personal life

Cone married David K. Cone in 1976 and moved to the east coast of Canada. The couple shared three daughters: Helen Anne Cone, Catherine Grace Cone, and Laura Jean Cone.

Awards

In 1977, Cone received the First Prize, based on the collective quality of work by individual artists, at the Maritime Art Association's 41ST Annual Exhibition from a field of forty-four artists exhibiting fifty-six works selected and curated from more than 2,500 art submissions.

Cone also accepted the Prize at the official opening of Fredericton's National Exhibition Centre on Queen Street from Dr Hsio-yen Shih, Director of the National Gallery of Canada.

Following this success, Cone was also named as one of 38 under-30-year-old upcoming artists or Young Contemporaries '78 in Canada.

She received various Canada Council Visiting Artist and Project Cost grants during the 1970s and 1980s. One such project grant funded a show on 'Aging' displayed at the Landmark Gallery in Fredericton in 1980.