Lorraine Marie Cote • California • waow
I paint what a moment feels like, not just what it looks like. Light shifts, shadows lengthen, and the mood of a place changes by the minute.
.
Lorraine is an artist whose work embodies the light, mood and atmosphere of the moment, which is why she particularly loves plein air painting. She aims for viewers to feel the emotion in her paintings and encourages them to notice the landscape and people around them in a new way. Her style is impressionistic, characterized by bold brushstrokes, dynamic compositions, and a variety of marks. She paints so that her work remains compelling both from a distance and upon close inspection.
Recent awards and plein air event highlights include: Honorable Mention in the Salon Art Prize (Fine Art Connoisseur Jul/Aug 2026, Plein Air Magazine, April 2026), Best in Show at Oceanside Plein Air (2025), Genie Scott Award Frank Bette Plein Air Invitational (2025), Telluride Plein Air (2025, 2026), Top 20 Modern Impressionists Magazine (Sept/Oct 2025 judge C.W. Mundy), Top 40 Modern Impressionists Magazine (Oct/Nov 2025 judge Albert Handell), Quick Draw Winner Oceanside Plein Air Festival (2023), 2nd Place Paint the Desert Plein Air Festival (2024). Lorraine’s work has been featured in museum exhibitions at the Oceanside Museum of Art and the Bonita Museum, as well as internationally at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. She also has had work included in shows for the California Art Club, Laguna Plein Air Painters Association, Richeson, and Artsy.
Lorraine has been privately trained by other successful artists through many years of intensive study in workshops and individual lessons. Her prior experience includes a corporate career as a strategy consultant where she used her creative talents in new product development. She holds a master’s degree in International Business from University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
I paint what a moment feels like, not just what it looks like. Light shifts, shadows lengthen, and the mood of a place changes by the minute — plein air painting lets me chase that fleeting quality directly, working outdoors with the landscape or scene in front of me rather than reconstructing it later from memory or photographs.
My style is impressionistic: bold brushstrokes, dynamic compositions, and a variety of marks that stay loose and confident rather than tightly rendered. I want a painting to hold together as a strong, simplified statement from across the room, then reward a closer look with the texture and decision-making in every stroke. That tension between distance and proximity is something I think about constantly while I work.
More than technical accuracy, I'm after emotional truth. I want viewers to feel the atmosphere I felt when I was standing there — the particular quality of a fading afternoon, the energy of a street scene, the stillness of an empty field — and in doing so, notice their own surroundings a little differently.
Painting has not been a straight path for me. Before turning to art full-time, I spent years as a strategy consultant, work that trained me to solve problems creatively and see structure within complexity — instincts that still shape how I compose a canvas. My real education as a painter has come through sustained study with working artists, in workshops and individual lessons, learning by painting with inspiring generous people.
These days I pass that on, teaching workshops of my own. Standing beside another painter working through the same problems of light, color, and composition keeps me honest about my own process, and it has become one of the most rewarding parts of what I do.
