Transitional Moments: Lynn Boggess
L
ynn Boggess discovers intimate beauty in nature through his expressionistic paintings.
Those who intimately study nature also gain a keen understand of time and its passing. Painter Lynn Boggess is one of them. He has spent most of the last thirty-odd years observing nature, then interpreting it in large canvases covered in thick impastos of paint applied in large “brush” strokes made with a cement trowel. The results are abstracted images of nature grounded in Boggess’s close understanding of the moments of quiet beauty found in minute particulars 14
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of the natural, physical world. This summer, for his new exhibition at EVOKE Contemporary, Boggess has created a number of landscapes that sprang from his intimate understanding of nature. When discussing this exhibition this past March, Boggess was in the midst of creating the work at the important moment when snow melts, blossoms form, and winter turns to spring. “Transitions are always exciting for me,” he said. “You work with one palette for three months, so changing into a new one is very exciting. I mean, I love
winter, it’s probably my favorite season—the challenge of it, the contrast of the white background against everything else, the quality of light—but then it turns into spring, and all these other challenges present themselves. “So, after three months, I’m ready to paint these gorgeous greens, soft pinks, and gentle blossoms that come out in white,” Boggess said. “Crab-apple blossoms are the quintessential spring image, and with my technique I’m able to approximate what the blossoms actually are: the size of the blossom, the physical sculptural structure of them.
