Lynn Kotula: A Life in Painting 1984-2020

Lynn Kotula

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Front cover: Pitcher, Red Onion, Yellow Onion, Garlic (detail) 2 2018, oil/panel, 7 x 15 in.

Lynn Kotula A Life in Painting 1984-2020 JUNE 21–JULY 9, 2022 BOWERY GALLERY

547 W 27 TH STREET, NEW YORK NY 10001

This catalog was produced in conjunction with:

Lynn Kotula A Life in Painting 1984-2020 June 21 –July 9, 2022 Bowery Gallery 547 West 27th Street, Suite 508 New York, NY 10001 www.bowerygallery.org 646.230.6655 Gallery hours: 11-6, Tues-Sat All images ©2022 Tony Stewart Catalog essay ©2022 John Goodrich Catalog design: John Goodrich Printing: The Studley Press ISBN: 978-0-578-39854-9

www.lynnkotula.com

Cat I (Lily) 2020, ink/paper, 10 x 12 in.

For Lynn, and the many people who supported her life in painting

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I like to paint.

I’m attracted by a color, a shape, an object.

I build a still life set up around it.

And then as I paint, I look for ways to make a painting out of what I’m looking at.

—Lynn Kotula ( 1945-2021 )

Oil Can with Funnel, Squash and Garlic 2018-19, oil/canvas, 15 x 28 in.

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Worlds Beyond Words Every now and then we might pause a moment, glance about our surroundings, and experience a brief, intense epiphany: What a wonderfully rich and varied world this is! In so many of its particulars, it exceeds our perceptions, our understanding, and even our powers of description.

When we do try to describe our extraordinary surroundings, we tend to resort to words—the medium in which we generally think and communicate. These accounts, when written or spoken by the poetically inclined, can seem truly luminous, and complete. Consider these opening lines from David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King:

Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on

the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat...1 Painters, however, engage a nonverbal language. Their expressions may be just as complex and complete, but they work in a perceptual region between the word and the physical world. (Indeed, they must, if they wish to express something beyond words.) This zone is somewhat rarefied, not so much pre-verbal as “averbal,” and it requires a departure from our customary ways of sharing experiences. One can think of every painting as an exchange-place for optical incident, a place confined in its fixed dimensions and ingredients and yet capable of highly eloquent representations of our world.

I was fortunate to have known Lynn Kotula for close to 40 years, as both a friend and fellow painter. Even 7

early on in this acquaintance, aspects of her character fixed in my mind—her humor, her generosity, and also a certain reserve, which was not so much a matter of withholding, but of astute judgment about when and how to engage. In conversation, she was invariably curious about others, but never invasive.

She was lucid in her opinions, and never fretful in expressing them. Above all, in my memory, she was “the adult in the room”—alert to all interests, and skillful at turning any conversation toward a helpful direction.

Lynn seemed to be also a fairly private person, one possessed of intensely personal observations and judgments, often unspoken though available for the asking. She was reluctant to discuss her own painting, and on only one occasion did she agree to talk publicly about her work. This was for a slide lecture she prepared in 2006 as a favor to her friend David Dewey. Many years later, we can benefit too; a number of the notes for this lecture, as movingly honest and insightful as ever, are quoted throughout this catalog.

Perhaps most crucially, her thoughts and impressions were offered, over and again, in the form of her paintings. Lynn left us what any artist would hope to leave: a chronicle of a visual understanding of the world. As it happens, Lynn was also a surpassingly good painter, and the record she leaves is one of a keen understanding of both our world and what painting can make of it.

Among the several Kotula paintings hanging on the walls of my family’s home is a landscape from 1995, “Towards Gravel Hill #2.” We never tire of its cele8

bration of life’s quirky plenitude: the fields of yellowand reddish-ochre that stream across the painting’s lower half, capturing the groundplane’s swift curl into the depths; the compressed bands of foliage facing us in the mid-distance, voluminous in its lit and fluffy shadowed zones; a distant field—the most vibrant note of all—sounding the depths of the gap between trees; beyond everything, a warmly vacant sky. If we stare a while, lesser events emerge: the very darkest note—the tip of a tree—setting off the lighter bulk of the tree directly in front; the crisp, singular note of a telephone pole delicately bisecting the band of foliage.

In this painting we experience not wizardly technique, nor conceptual sleight-of-hand, but a delight in the visual ways and means of nature, in which every element is made to count, in its own time and fashion. Such a painting could only have been created by someone who had experienced both the rich variety of the visible world and the remarkable possibilities of painting, as demonstrated by the works of such great artists as Corot, Matisse and Bonnard. * * * Lynn Kotula was born December 4, 1945, in Morristown, New Jersey. Throughout her childhood, she enjoyed drawing. “I had been a sort of animist,” she recalled in that 2006 slide lecture. “I felt that in looking at something and drawing I could become the thing—absorb it.”2 Her father was a successful magazine illustrator, especially in the 1940s and 50s before magazines began incorporating color photography, and Lynn had fond memories of gazing among the brushes and paints in his studio.

Towards Gravel Hill #2 1995, oil/canvas, 12 x 18 in.

Her first experiences with contemporary art, however, were less happy. Early studies with a “real NYC painter,” who insisted that abstract painting was a pursuit of “a nothing,” left her cold. She also felt little interest in the “happenings” staged by fellow students in her college art department. In 1968 Lynn graduated from Douglass College of Rutgers University with a BA in History/Art History. She went on to earn an MA in Early Childhood Education at New York University.

The year 1968 brought a change of residence and an introduction to an artistic community that was to

change the trajectory of her life. She described the sea-change in that 2006 lecture:

It wasn’t until I graduated from college with a BA in History, moved to New York and started meeting artists who were working from life and doing work that excited me, that I learned that there was a place for me in the world of contemporary art. And I was in exactly the right place to start. There were lots of painters working from life and with a variety of approaches. And plenty of passionate, articulate teachers, wonderful artists themselves. And I gradually learned that thinking abstractly was not thinking about “nothing” but thinking about 9

“something”—something essential—that would become integral to my own work.

When she was almost 30 years old, Lynn embarked on the life of an artist. She quit her job teaching young children and began waiting tables at Paulson’s Supper Club on West 72nd Street in order to devote her daylight hours to painting. Over the next several years, she studied with Gabriel Laderman at the Art Students League, with Leland Bell and Gretna Campbell at the New York Studio School, and with Bell and Paul Resika at the Parsons School of Design, where she earned her MFA in Painting in 1980. During these years in school, Lynn worked almost always from a model, with occasional outings to paint the landscape. She turned the living room in her West 121st Street apartment into a painting studio, eventually expanding the work space to include the dining room as well. For the next four decades, this studio served as the locus of her painting life in New York. She painted what was at hand: household objects and fabrics, set up on a couple of old wooden tables.

The year 1985 brought two important events. That year Lynn had her first one-person exhibition at Prince Street Gallery in New York City. It was the first of many solo exhibitions in the city, at Prince Street and later Bowery Gallery. She was also to participate in group shows at numerous other NYC venues, including Lori Bookstein Fine Art, Lohin Geduld Gallery, the National Academy of Design and The Painting Center, as well as many other galleries around the country. Her work was favorably mentioned in The New York Times, The New Haven Register and other publications.

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Also in 1985, Lynn met Tony Stewart, a writer and filmmaker commencing on a new career in software development and consulting. As Lynn described it, she had occasionally spotted Tony at the local swimming pool, and one day took the opportunity of lounging strategically by the pool’s ladder. The gambit worked: a brief conversation led to dinners and, before long, romantic attachment.

The two married in 1988, and the following year Lynn moved in with Tony, keeping her 121st Street space as a studio. * * * Tony recalls how, in their early days together, Lynn was inspired especially by Cézanne. We can get an idea of a working artist’s life—the practical struggles of a young painter, as well as Lynn’s distinct outlook—in this excerpt from her application for a grant in 1986:

I find that in the same way I approach my still life and landscape, I approach myself as a painter: feinting, making stabs, at last finding my mark. Now I am at a stage where I need to work more intensely in the landscape—to use what I have learned in the studio in facing nature’s intelligence and whimsy. I have been supporting myself as a waitress, which gives me the daylight hours to paint but not the means to do serious work outdoors. With a grant I could have both. 3 As it turned out, Lynn didn’t receive the grant. The following summer, however, brought something even better: the opportunity of renting a floor in the painter Lois Dodd’s house near the Delaware Water Gap. Lynn and Tony commenced on what

Blue Vase and Collard Greens 1997, oil/canvas, 23 x 36 in.

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turned out to be a life-long routine: spending the summer months in the country, where Lynn could devote herself to both the landscape and still lifes set up in Lois’ studio.

The leap from carefully composed still life to the broad, ever-changing outdoors took some adjustment, but the artist persevered, and settled into a year-round routine:

I spend most of the year indoors. From Labor Day to Memorial Day I paint orderly compositions from still lifes of my own design. In June I’m eager for the chance to return to the landscape. Whereas in painting from a still life I stand and look at my set up, constructing my painting from edges and cohesive forms; in the landscape, I stand in the midst of my painting, trying to distinguish the bushes from the trees and the vines. It’s disorienting at first to be without my open table top; but it’s challenging and fun to sort my way through the chaos of greens and find sense in this fluid environment.

Outdoors, of course, along with the changing light, there are storms, bugs—AND—occasionally, a bear, something I never see in my studio.4 Lynn used larger canvases for her still lifes, often working for weeks on a single painting. The still lifes appealed to her sense of order and containment: “There’s something in the act of choosing and arranging that compels me. I like the step of devising before I paint.” In Lois’ studio, she usually set up the still lifes on one of two particular tables, with the light coming from behind the artist, so the objects’ shadows retreated into the depths. (By contrast, the shadows in the still lifes painted in the 121st Street studio, which had windows to the side 12

of her tables, routinely flow left or right.) She never painted under artificial light, preferring to work even as the daylight dimmed to dusk.

Working outdoors involved a wholly different scale and method of attack:

In the landscape I paint on small panels, aiming to complete a painting in one day, before the landscape is transformed by man or nature. I usually paint several paintings from a site, each time finding something more or new. It’s a little like falling in love.5 The demands of still life and landscape painting, while very different, turned out to complement each other. “…as I paint I reflect on my still life painting,” she explained, “when I return to my studio, I have the landscape in my head. Each informs and enriches the other.”6 Often asked if she were inspired by Lois Dodd’s work, Lynn’s answer was always the same: though a great admirer, she wasn’t consciously affected by working in Lois’ studio. But Lynn did allow that being surrounded by Dodd’s luminous paintings for several months each summer must have influenced her on some unconscious level. * * * Lynn would likely have disapproved of any attempt to sort through and categorize her lifework, but from our vantage point we can trace the broad outlines of her journey as a painter. In the late 70s to mid-80s she focused on evocatively rendered still lifes and landscapes that were capably, if sometimes

Green Barns 1985, oil/paper, 7 x 13 in.

conventionally, composed. From the late 80s to the mid-“aughts,” when she supplemented her still lifes with intense summers of painting landscapes near the Water Gap, her forms became more incisively— sometimes almost severely—modeled in light, and her compositions bolder and more abstracted. After 2008, when she began concentrating solely on still life, she often worked on smaller, simpler set-ups, modeling them in a more naturalistic and deeply atmospheric light.

An early landscape like ”Green Barns” (1985) shows an acute sensitivity to light and a solid composition.

But shortly Lynn was to embark on more daring designs, perhaps spurred on by an increasingly keen grasp of the fundamental dramas of the landscape.

We tend to take the spectacle of nature for granted, but an artist connects with its sheer optical inten-

sity: the effect of a single ground plane sweeping towards the horizon from beneath our feet, with objects—each resisting gravity—marking out broad expanses of space. One senses in Lynn’s early landscapes a gathering realization that the intervals in a painting, to feel pictorially truthful, must be rhythmically maximized. Only in this way could one capture, in full measure, the landscapist’s proverbial “marriage of earth and sky.”

On the visual evidence of her paintings, Lynn did, as she described, fall in love with her landscape motifs. It’s fair to say that it was a “tough love”—a discriminating attachment that urged forms towards their most potent selves. In “Blue House at Footbridge Park” (1993), for instance, the darkish, leafy rise of trees fills much of the painting’s surface, introduced by the quick curl of a path 13

Blue House at Footbridge Park 1993, oil/panel, 14 x 15 in.

at the bottom edge. Lynn introduced small, bright horizontals that have a major effect; they push back to distant patches of ground, accelerating the rising bulk of the trees. The sunlit façade of a blue house and far-away trees occupy the depths, staring mildly back at us. But it’s the foreground trees themselves, rendered in countless warmer and cooler greens, that hold before the eye as depths within climbing depths; one physically feels their 14

clambering against gravity. Crucially, all these events are embodied, rather than scripted, in continuously, subtly weighted color.

Her landscape painting seems to have indeed affected her approach to the still life. As if inspired by outdoor light—by the organizing power of a single, directed source of illumination—Lynn began to practically carve her still life objects in light. Her

Wooden Bowl with Pears and Squash, Metal Tray 2001, oil/canvas, 18 x 28 in.

paintings from the 90s tend towards more concise cast shadows and crisper, bolder divisions between color zones—a development especially evident in her still lifes. We feel the artist zeroing in on one of the paradoxes of painting light: shadows, utterly weightless in life, acquire remarkable pictorial heft on canvas.

In these years, Lynn talked less of Cézanne, and more about Matisse and Braque. Her paintings reflect a new delight in abstracted forms and rhythmic arabesques. In “Wooden Bowl with Pears and Squash, Metal Tray” (2001), she captures, with equal vigor, the light-modeled volumes and the intervals between objects. Colors are not merely descriptive;

each one urges on a syncopated circulation of forms.

Like a one-two punch, similarly inclined pears converse across the dividing arc of a bowl. An embracing flow of fabric lifts away from the opposing tilt of the bowl. Abstracted moments become tangible sensations. At the same time Lynn imparts a richly naturalistic gleam to the shadows on an acorn squash and a tray’s reflective rim. In-between, a complex of indescribable gray-greens and -blues—shadows within shadows—beautifully locates the tray’s surface.

“I think that opposition is what nourishes me,” Lynn wrote in her 2006 lecture notes. “Abstraction/naturalism. I need both and I’m always looking for ways to have one nourish or enrich the other.”

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Over the decades Lynn composed her still lifes with increasing assurance. While an early painting such as “Fruit and Geraniums” (1984-85) vividly renders every volume, they tend to all rest within a conventionally centralized box of space. But the expansive, limits-resisting spaces of the landscape may have carried over into such still lifes as the large, stately “Blue Napkin,” (2006). In this striking work, the artist not only evokes the delicate light descending on numerous off-white objects, but powerfully paces their movement across the canvas’ full 37-inch width. Subtle shifts of color define the independence of each object: the stretching coolness of the pitcher next to a warm and lumpily angling butternut squash; a rising vase paired with a rotund squash—both of them yellow, though in different fashion. In front, condensed upon the table, lies a knot of the most intensely articulated objects of all: fluted starfruit, bent eggplant, small napkin edging off the table. A complex hierarchy animates the rhythmic unity of the painting: this becomes large, because that is small, this looms as that retires.

Top:

Fruit and Geraniums 1984-85, oil/canvas, 24 x 28 in.

Bottom:

Onion Shadow c. 2013, oil/panel, 8½ x 16 in.

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“Blue Napkin” shows some of the tendencies that were to grow stronger in Lynn’s still life paintings. Her forms became brushier, softer, and more atmospheric, and objects tended to overlap more often and more fluidly. By 2008, she had almost completely stopped painting outdoors to concentrate on still life. She had tired of trying to find, as Tony put it, the few, opposing notes to all the “green, green, green.”

In the 2010s these still life paintings tended towards smaller, simpler compositions, with a closer point of view that cropped one or two—sometimes all—edges of the table. One gem from this period, “Onion Shadow” (ca. 2013), imparts a quiet monu-

Blue Napkin 2006, oil/canvas, 22 x 37 in.

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Lemons, Lime, Oil Can and Striped Cloth 2017, oil/panel, 10 x 18 in.

mentality to a handful of items. A large sea shell asserts its height like a building façade in sunlight, its matte whites setting off the dark glints of a metal pitcher alongside. Smaller notes of onion, lemon and pepper range below, a trio from which the first two elements can rise. * * * In 2014, Lynn was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic cancer. Over the next six years she underwent a 18

number of standard as well as experimental treatments. She endured several surgeries and prolonged hospital stays. Between treatments, however, she continued to paint with undiminished intensity. Tony describes this difficult but productive time:

…when she was finally able to go back to the studio she started making very simple setups…Not knowing how much time she had left, she wanted to start painting as quickly as possible and make as many paintings as she

could while she still had the strength. From that urgency came a new kind of freedom, a lack of self-consciousness in the setup, and the result is the series of small paintings she made in the last five years of her life. She loved making these paintings; for a long time they came almost effortlessly to her, and both the process and the results gave her great pleasure.7 The new objects that appeared in her set-ups include portions of baguettes and an antique oil can with a right-angled spout. A hexagonal pie pan, occasionally seen in previous years, makes a number of appearances.

In Lynn’s vigorous paintings, these slightly odd items all acquire a rough kind of grandeur.

“Lemons, Lime, Oil Can and Striped Cloth” (2017) reminds us of how thoroughly Lynn was a colorist: a painter driven to make every hue leverage a composition. Registering the weight of light—from full, overhead illumination to rich shadow to mildly reflecting light—her colors impart to each lemon an almost boulder-like presence. Less eye-catching, but no less critical to the effect, are the patches of table and fabric between them. Neither overwhelmed by nor overpowering the lemons, the pressures of fabric and tabletop support the lemons’ progression across the painting. The artist clearly cared enough about her objects to make them not simply believable, but essential.

New arrangements entailed new characterizations, and in a gem from the following year, “Eggplant, Shell, Lime and Lemons with Small Creamer” (2018), a shell’s lengthy, rippling contour—summed up in a few deft strokes—resolves in the compact notes of two lemons.

Top:

Eggplant, Shell, Lime and Lemons with Small Creamer 2018, oil/panel, 10 x 18 in.

Above:

Indian Measuring Can, Creamer, Shell 2019, oil/panel, 8 x 16 in.

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Lynn experimented stylistically as well, allowing the contours of forms to sinuously connect in “Indian Measuring Can, Creamer, Shell” (2019). The intervals between objects compress, so they tangibly huddle against the “other” of the surrounding space. Lynn’s admiration for Morandi had only increased over the years, and here we have the Italian master’s predilection for small, atmospheric, cloister-like spaces, only livened by Lynn’s own vital rhythms.

Lynn left a number of paintings unfinished at her death in February, 2021. Tony, however, believes she completed “Still Life with Bread and Knife” (2020). Indeed, this small work may represent her very last finished painting.8 Though especially subdued, the artist’s colors once again impart an independent weightiness to each element. The cool lights of a white cup rise with sturdy simplicity behind a forbiddingly round onion, opalescent in its half-dozen coppery hues. A second round object, of a totally different nature, opens to the left.

This dish becomes the concave support for a garlic and the angular, articulated sections of a baguette, caught in cool reds and ochres. The rim of the dish, a delicate blue, glides beneath to separate chunky bread and the grasping folds of the fabric beneath.

Ordinarily, a steel knife might seem the ultimate in both optical fanfare and symbolic portent, but here it lies coolly, placidly, a sliver of muted reflections. If it could speak, it might announce, “Carry on, all; I’ll hold the table’s front.”

In this small slice of the observed world, it is the optical dance of forms—not utilitarian context, nor symbolic purposes or assays in style—that counts. We know how each element belongs even before we know what it does.

Is this something like the perceptions of a newborn, who knows a blanket, a bottle and a mother’s face before knowing how to explain them? Many things exceed our verbal comprehension, even as they self-evidently matter. How grateful we are to Lynn, an artist who sensed this, and so eloquently shared the experience.

—John Goodrich March 2022

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David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2011) Except as noted, all quoted statements by Lynn Kotula are from her 2006 slide lecture at Lyme Academy of Fine Arts Application for Ingram Merrill fellowship, dated September 12, 1986 “Artist Statement–Landscape,” exhibition notes, ca. 1995 Ibid.

Ibid.

Tony Stewart, email to John Goodrich, January 23, 2022 In the last months of her life, when Lynn could no longer paint, she made a series of small drawings around the house.

Two of them, Cat I and Cat IV, are included in this book.

Still Life with Bread and Knife 2020, oil/panel, 11 x 15 in.

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I have always painted from observation.

What compels me is exploring the tension between what I see and what I can invent on the painting’s flat surface.

I want to paint paintings in which each gesture—color or line— has multiple meanings. The ochre does more than name the “pear”; it has a relationship with a yellow, or red or green; it’s color and drawing; it pushes against the purple in the shadow.

I love this transformation of the seen into the language of color and shape. I want my paintings to tell the non-verbal stories that only painting can tell.

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In the beginning there was always the blue table. I thought that everything looked wonderful on its luminous surface. In these next two, I’ve used the diagonal to draw my eye into the space. The plunging diagonals and deep shadows dramatize the still life.

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Left:

Still Life with Spruce Branch 1989, oil/canvas, 20 x 30 in.

Right:

The Blue Desk 1984, oil/canvas, 40 x 30 in.

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Still Life, Blue Teapot 1985, oil/canvas, 18 x 23 in.

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Winter 1988, oil/canvas, 18 x 34 in.

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I was drawn to this palette—the whites of the shells and the plate and the earthy orange of the pears against the blue of the cloth—and in the mirror, a summing up; the shadows are more patterns than structure.

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Shells and Mirror 1991, oil/canvas, 16 x 24 in.

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Winged Vase, Green Cup, Bowl of Grapes c. 1992, oil/canvas, 24 x 34 in.

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I’ve always been drawn to the monumental—to Giotto, Piero, Courbet, Cézanne, Bonnard, Braque...and an interplay between the formal elements and the observed. I’m always looking for a way to observe and make a painting at the same time.

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Around 1992, 1993 I started simplifying my shapes even more. It had started with the drapery and shadows. I’d found the freedom to play with the solid forms. In these paintings I found myself pushing the shadows as elements in themselves and breaking up the objects to free the forms.

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Above:

Oatmeal Bowl, Clay Pitcher and Squashes #2 2004, oil/canvas, 16 x 30 in.

Left:

Lacquer Bowl and Funnel 1997, oil/canvas, 11 x 23 in.

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Left:

Squash with Jello Mold on Chair 1994, oil/canvas, 24 x 17 in.

Right:

Squash and Pears, Blush Cloth 1993, oil/canvas, 15 x 24 in.

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I became crazy about pears. Bosc pears were my favorite. They have sympathetic, lovely curves. I had been looking at Zurbaran. I loved his stagy, somber paintings, his palette of earth tones and the weighty architecture of his cloth. The pears really lend themselves to anthropomorphosis.

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Still Life on Table with Mirror Behind c. 2008, oil/canvas, 28 x 36 in.

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I loved Bonnard’s dinner tables and the clutter of Fairfield Porter’s breakfast, but I wasn’t attracted to found arrangements as a subject for my own work.

There’s something in the act of choosing and arranging that compels me.

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Above:

Squash, Tea Can and Mango 1997, oil/canvas, 12 x 17 in.

Right:

Green Bowl, Squash and Gourd on Cake Plate 2002, oil/canvas, 20 x 16 in.

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Portuguese Pitcher, White Eggplants in Basket c. 1999, oil/panel, 13 x 18 in.

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Right:

Bitter Melon, Squash, Charcoal Box c. 2005, oil/canvas, 12 x 18 in.

Below:

Shell, Funnel and Blue Cloth 1997, oil/canvas, 12 x 24 in.

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Above:

Bananas and Squashes on Black Drawing Table c. 2003, oil/canvas, 22 x 32 in.

Left:

Bananas and Squashes on Black Drawing Table c. 2003, charcoal/paper, 22 x 30 in.

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This is how I set up a still life.

I start with an object—or a small group of objects whose color and shape engage me. I put them on a tabletop and then move them around. I’m exploring ways to make them relate to one another, to belong together. I am looking for an arrangement that feels necessary.

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I do some quick drawings. The drawing helps me to identify trouble areas in the setup. I change things.

Of course, moving things around introduces new relationships and problems. Often I decide to go ahead anyway. Those areas that I couldn’t figure out in the drawing are always trouble in the painting.

It’s okay; I like a certain amount of trouble.

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Right:

Bread, Two Pitchers, Yellow Squash and Lemons c. 2017, charcoal/panel, 10 x 20 in.

Below:

Bread, Two Pitchers, Yellow Squash and Lemons c. 2017, oil/panel, 10 x 20 in.

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Pudding Mold and My New Box 2006, charcoal/paper, 25 x 37 in.

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Pudding Mold and My New Box 2006 oil/canvas, 25 x 37 in.

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As I got more involved in still life I painted less landscape. But I love painting in the landscape and I need it. In the landscape I become a more direct painter. I cannot find concrete, planar forms. I cannot be as reductive in the landscape. I have to find what I need to make sense. And because I paint much smaller paintings in the landscape, each brushstroke gets to function in several ways—as color and drawing.

Left:

Glade–Stillwater c. 2000, oil/panel, 8 x 13½ in.

Right:

Sharp Farm–Towards Stillwater c. 2000, oil/panel, 8 x 16 in.

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I’m drawn to these situations with a central vertical axis and the chance to find the space around—or on either side—of what’s usually a tree—as here when you have on one side a domestic setting with a house and on the other the open space of the fields; or in the other painting with the fields on one and the road, on the other.

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Left:

Stillwater House Through the Trees 2005, oil/panel, 9 x 16 in.

Right:

Deer Run Fields towards Bethel 1996, oil/panel, 8 x 15 in.

Below:

Farm Road–Columbia c. 2000, oil/panel, 8 x 20 in.

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During the summer months in Blairstown, I’ve been increasingly finding myself indoors painting in Lois Dodd’s studio. The studio has southern/eastern light—crazy shadows. For me it’s a challenge to paint from front-lit objects—and fun.

Left:

Round Eggplant, Cucumber, Winter Landscape 2009, oil/panel, 14 x 19 in.

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Top:

Percolator and Squash, Summer Studio 2005, oil/panel, 12 x 22 in.

Left:

Checkered Cloth with Coffee Pot, Winter Landscape 2009, oil/panel, 13 x 22 in.

Opposite:

Checkered Cloth with Funnel 2009, oil/canvas, 21 x 28 in.

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Bok Choy, Shell, Eggplants 2012, oil/panel, 13 x 18 in.

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Bottle Gourd and Beets with Pink Cup 2008, oil/panel, 13 x 18 in.

When I return to my NY studio from Blairstown, I become aware of how edgy and self-contained my forms often are and I often want to bring something of the softness of the landscape into my paintings. Beet greens are particularly beautiful because they have a deep alizarine vein and their leaves have a purple/green cast.

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Left:

Still Life with Landscape (Red) 1994, oil/canvas, 34 x 25 in.

Opposite:

Butternut and Winter Squash, Blue Cloth c. 2000, oil/canvas, 17 x 33 in.

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I love playing with the flat against the volumetric—the pattern against the form— to see if I can find ways to use the pattern to express the form.

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I started to want something different. I wanted to bring more light into the shadows—to make them more transparent—to find a way of seeing the form in a more specific and complex way.

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Left:

Butternut and Striped Squash with Shell c. 2013-14, oil/canvas, 10 x 25 in.

Right:

The Big Table 2003, oil/canvas, 40 x 28 in.

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Left:

Lemons, Lime, and Avocado on Milk Glass Cake Stand 2017, oil/panel, 16 x 12 in.

Right:

Butternut and Calabaza with Mangosteen and Funnel c. 2005, oil/panel, 9 x 18 in.

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I was drawn to a lighter, warmer palette, to objects with more nuanced color relationships. I think your eye moves differently through these paintings—less the staccato of dark/light—you can actually travel through the objects.

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Hexagonal Pie Tin, Lemons and Limes in Doorway c. 2015, oil/panel, 10 x 16 in.

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Right:

Red Cabbage, Chinese Apple and Red Box 2012, oil/panel, 8 x 13 in.

Below:

Yellow Squash, Lemon, Eggplant on Yellow Cloth c. 2012, oil/panel, 10 x 20 in.

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A Lot of Squash and Eggplant, One Huge 2012, oil/canvas, 16 x 32 in.

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I can’t emphasize enough how much— despite the fact that I’m setting these up in a very conscious way—I find what I love in the process of looking and painting.

What I look for are those moments when I leave my conscious and knowing self behind and disappear into the experience of looking, and finding equivalents for that experience through color and drawing.

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Top:

Onion, Tiger Squash, Lemon, Funnel and Yellow-striped Napkin 2018, oil/panel, 10 x 18 in.

Left:

Garlic, Onion, Zucchini and Tiger Squash with Ramekin 2018, oil/panel, 9 x 16 in.

Right:

Pink Cup, Tiger Squash, Lemons and Yellow Striped Napkin 2017, oil/panel, 11 x 20 in.

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Above:

Pitcher, Red Onion, Yellow Onion, Garlic 2018, oil/panel, 7 x 15 in.

Right:

Pitcher and Squash c. 2006, oil/panel, 10 x 7 in.

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Shell with Tiger Squash and Lemon 2017, oil/panel, 10 x 16 in.

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Everything that I paint—all the objects, the tables, chairs, the fabrics—are things that I’ve found—and always when I’m not really looking...

It always seems when I find something that it’s what I’ve been looking for all along.

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Lynn at work in David Dewey’s studio, 2006

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Solo Exhibitions 2022 2021 2018 2016 2012 1985-2002 1989

A Life in Painting 1984-2020, Bowery Gallery, NY A Clear Vision, online exhibition, Bowery Gallery, NYC Tabletalk, Bowery Gallery, NYC Conversations on a Tabletop, Bowery Gallery, NYC Animated Conversations, Bowery Gallery, NYC Prince Street Gallery, NYC (7 shows) Andrews Gallery, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA

Two-Person Exhibitions 2007 2000

Tabletop Play, Romano Gallery, Blair Academy, Blairstown, NJ Contemporary Still Life, Clark House Gallery, Bangor, Maine

Group Exhibitions 2021 2019 2019 2018 2016 2015 2014 2012 2010

2009

2007 2006

Process of Discovery, Bowery Gallery, NYC Preserved in Time, BCK Fine Arts Gallery, Montauk, NY Open Table, BCK Fine Arts Gallery, Montauk, NY Rooms With a View: Seven Artists, Westbeth Gallery, NYC New York, New York II (curated by Ro Lohin), Watson-Macrae Gallery, Sanibel Island, FL Landscape (curated by Hal Bromm), Gourmet Gallery, Blairstown, NY The Painting Center, NYC Drawn Together, Marina Gallery, Cold Spring, NY The Common Object (with Zeuxis), MICA, Baltimore, MD; Lancaster Museum of Fine Arts, Lancaster, PA; Prince Street Gallery, NYC Haiti Relief, Lohin Geduld Gallery, NYC Realism Unbound, The Noyes Museum of Art, Oceanville, NJ In/Out (with Zeuxis), Broome Street Gallery, NYC; Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY Art in a Box Benefit, Cheryl Pelavin Gallery, NYC On Board, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, NYC International School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture, Montecastelo de Vibio, Italy 75

2006

2005 2004

2003

2001 2000

1999 1995 1993 1992 1991 1990

Landscaping, Lohin Geduld Gallery, NYC 13th Anniversary Show, The Painting Center, NYC Facets of Perception (with Zeuxis), Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, NY; Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Auburn, NY; Wiegand Gallery, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, CA; Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Hollins University, Roanoke New Work, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, NYC A Sense of Place: New Jersey, The Noyes Museum of Art, Oceanville, NJ Small Works–Large Scale, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, NYC Study: The New York Studio School 2004 Alumni Exhibition (curated by James Hyde), Roebling Hall, Brooklyn, NY Tabletop Arenas (with Zeuxis), Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; Lori Bookstein Fine Art, NYC Works on Paper (curated by Barbara Goodstein), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA The Power of the Seen (curated by Paula Heisen), The Painting Center, NYC Distinct Visions–Diverse Pursuits, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA Uncommon Perspectives (with Zeuxis), Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC; Hermitage Foundation Museum, Norfolk, VA; Attleboro Museum, Attleboro MA A Moveable Feast (with Zeuxis), Westbeth Gallery, NYC Painting New Jersey (curated by Rita Baragona), Blair Academy, Blairstown , NJ 175th Annual Juried Exhibition, National Academy of Design, NYC Zeuxis: Still Life, University Art Gallery, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, WI Zeuxis at Marywood (curated by Mark Webber), Marywood University, Scranton, PA New Jersey Landscapes (curated by Lois Dodd), Firehouse Gallery, Bordertown, NJ Zeuxis Still Life, Erector Square Gallery, New Haven Zeuxis Still Life, Marymount College, Tarrytown, NY New York Collection 1995, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY The Nature Morte: A Current View, The New York Studio School, NY Prince Street Gallery at The Trenton State Museum, Trenton State Museum, Trenton, NJ Prince Street Gallery at C.W. Post, C.W. Post College, NY Gabriel Laderman Selects, First Street Gallery, NYC 121 Wooster Street, Contemporary Realist Gallery, San Francisco, CA Lynn with Merry Cherry, 2007

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1989 1986 1984

1982

Five Women Realists, Contemporary Realist Gallery, San Francisco, CA Still Life Invitational, Andrews Gallery, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 159th Annual Juried Exhibition, National Academy of Design, NYC Invitational, Bowery Gallery, NYC Salon Invitational, Prince Street Gallery, NYC Three Morningside Artists, Bank Street College Gallery, Bank Street College, NYC

Bibliography 2016 2012 2007 2001 2000 1999 1995 1995 1992 1989

“Lynn Kotula & Tony Serio” (review), OnViewAt.com, March 2016 “Lynn Kotula: Animated Conversations” (review), OnViewAt.com, October 2012 “Art in Brief,” The New York Sun, July 19, 2007 “Arts & Leisure” (photo), The New York Times, July 15, 2001 “Arts” (review), New Haven Register, April 16, 2000 The New York Times, Westchester edition (photo), April 28, 1999 The William & Mary Review (photo), Volume 33, 1995 American Home Style (photo) American Art, desk diary published by Robert Abrams “Full Circle” (review), Art & Antiques, February 1989

Honors and Awards Senior Resident, The International School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, September 2006 Fellow, Virginia Center for the Arts, Sweet Briar, VA Resident, Cummington Community of the Arts, Cummington, MA Helena Rubinstein Fellowship

Education MFA in Painting, Parsons School of Design, NYC New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, NYC The Art Students League, NYC BA in History/Art History, Douglass College, Rutgers University

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This book was a collaboration between John Goodrich, who designed it and wrote the essay, and Tony Stewart, who produced it.

Special thanks to the painters Flavia Bacarella, Rita Baragona, Naomi Nemtzow and Maria Pia Marrella for the hours they spent reviewing Lynn’s work and proposing which paintings to include, and to Paula Heisen, Gael Mooney and Cordelia Pierson for additional assistance.

Lynn in the Blairstown Studio, 2015 79

My cats have always drawn me to them with their spiraling, hidden forms.

This year, for the first time, I drew them exclusively in pen—no erasing.

The pen forces me to keep moving, moving, helping me to see the cat in motion.

(What one learns—quickly—is that one’s kitty, who seems always to be asleep, is really only moving from one pose to another, always in motion.)

Cat IV (Boo) 2020, ink/paper, 11 x 14 in.

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Back cover: Eggplant and Squash #2 2006, oil/panel, 6 x 8 in. 81

$30.00 ISBN 978-0-578-39854-9

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