Kathryn Lynch | Here comes the sun and other situations

KATHRYN LYNCH

KATHRYN LYNCH

HERE COMES THE SUN & OTHER SITUATIONS

TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY

HERE COMES THE SUN

Kathryn Lynch renders landscapes as timeless and placeless, parsing her chosen subject into near symbols: a road is represented by an intrepid cascade of ochre red, cars emerge as suggestive lines and blots of safety-orange, the sun is emphatically reduced to a vermillion orb. With this solo exhibition, her sixth with Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Lynch has focused her unsparing eye on the sun and the road, the subjects which define her time spent in Puglia, Italy last year. Lynch reflected, “It was the sun and the road, and just how free it felt. It was really rugged.” This body of work was largely inspired by Puglia but painted back in her studio in Catskill, New York while other works in the exhibition were created from her time spent at the Truro Center for the Arts at Edgewood Farm Residency in Truro, Massachusetts. Transcending time and place, each work embodies Lynch’s longtime occupation and “crowning achievement as a painter: capturing the liminal spaces that define the essence of a given place,” as written by painter-critic Patrick Neal.

Though the places and elements that inspire Lynch vary from year to year and place to place, her method and her undertaking have remained the same. “I am painting the poetry of place rather than the place,” Lynch said. “It is a boat anywhere; it is a sky for everyone. It is nowhere and everywhere.” Lynch paints like a poet, evoking emotion through eloquent imagery. On long walks through the many artist residencies she attends or on her treacherous drives through Puglia, Italy (Lynch reflected on her time, “I feel like I risked my life for these paintings, between the heatwaves, Covid and Italian drivers- and my inability to speak Italian.”), Lynch lets life whirl around her, a kinetic routine punctuated by perception. Certain scenes settle in her unconscious and resurface inside her studio: a long and barren dirt road creeping up a hill, the glowing sun hanging over a green sea, cattails gently swaying in warm light.

Painterly and patient, Lynch lets her unconscious unpack what she has seen and experienced – prosaic subject matter that, through excavation and simplification, emerge as transcendent testaments to essentialism

and the universality of human experience in nature. These are not plein air landscape paintings; rather, Lynch sketches as she walks and moves through environments, and then, because she simplifies everything she has seen, she can work from those sketches in her painting later in her studio. “While driving in Puglia I was forced to take mental snapshots and etch them in my head… I have an antenna that says ‘paint that, paint this’, and when I’m in places with exceptional light, my antenna works overtime and says ‘Paint that! Paint this! Paint more of that!’” In paint handling, Lynch is sparing, working with confident brushstrokes in thinly veiled washes thrown open by the climactic flash of a brilliant tangerine sun. As paintings, these moments in time feel vague yet familiar, more of a suggestion than specific. “When I paint, I feel like I have extreme clarity. It is as if I am in touch with something that leads the way. I rely heavily on trusting my instincts… My paintings are guttural, they need to breathe in order to feel complete.”

Lynch finds beauty and familiarity in every iteration and location of nature, and finds her focus on the subjects she feels are essential to that place. These near-spiritual symbols of place are what defined her experience and define that place. In New York, it was the roads, lights and tugboats. In Skowhegan, it was the idyllic countryside. In Puglia, it was the sun and the road. In Puglia, Lynch felt all things revolved around the seemingly ever-present sun, and her experience was defined by her time spent on the craggy and untamed roads. “In Puglia ,the sun sat low in the sky… It was the hottest I have ever been. I was surrounded by wild and rugged beauty. The roads were unpaved. It was the quintessential road trip.”

Because the sun was so integral to Lynch’s experience of Italy, she naturally focused much of her work on light and its effects. “Within five, ten or fifteen minutes you can have a whole bunch of different paintings according to how light changes… I took long drives to get to the sea from Oria- and on the drive home, the light would change dramatically… It’s the same subject, but at different hours. And that’s true anywhere you stand, you could stand all day long and look at one thing, but the day will change it.”

In many of these new works, which are marked by a nebulous haze that engulfs the subject matter, the sun is not only the principal subject, but also the primary actor. “When the sun is really big, it actually makes you squint, and it creates a white haze… the sun itself has sort of created that haze… You can’t really look at anything so you’re just peeking.” Lynch uses these snapshots of memory and feeling to create dreamlike and distinctly atmospheric works that not only capture the drama of different hours of the day and effects of light and time on a place, but also the experience of being present in those times, lights and places, of being within and subject to nature.

Lynch’s painterly pursuits are always dually autobiographical and universal. “The act of painting takes you on a road to somewhere. I think roads are very symbolic to me just in terms of feeling like I’m on an open road when I’m in my studio. Painting is kind of like a road to somewhere, but you don’t know where you’re going… I’m interested in how light falls, the shapes that are made in nature, and how through paint it transforms itself into mood and feeling… They’re very simplistic, so they are not really about that particular road; they’re about everything a road conjures, everything it symbolizes.”

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Kathryn Lynch received her undergraduate degree from William Smith College in Geneva, NY, and an MFA at the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. She was awarded the NYSCA/NYFA artist Fellow in Painting in 2018. She has been invited to Skowhegan, Yaddo, The Marie Walsh Foundation and The Vermont Studio Center. Since earning her MFA, Lynch has held numerous solo exhibitions and participated in well over thirty group shows both nationally and internationally. Her work is in the permanent collections of the University of California Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA and Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN, as well as many corporate collections, including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and the Millennium Art Collection in the Ritz Carlton, Battery Park, in NYC. The artist lives in Catskill, NY, and works in a curated artist campus called Foreland.

SUN BEHIND WINTER WILDS , 2023

Oil on linen

48 x 36 inches

DRY RED ROAD TO BLUE SEA , 2023

Oil on linen

14 x 11 inches

CURVES , 2023

Oil on linen

14 x 11 inches

HAZE , 2023 Oil on linen

14 x 11 inches

ROAD TRIP, 2022

Oil on linen

53 x 48 inches

SUN OVER ROAD, 2023

Oil on linen

63 x 60 inches

RED

SUN SETTING IN TURO, 2023

Oil on linen

63 x 60 inches

AFTERNOON HEAT , 2023

Oil on canvas

24 x 20 inches

HEATWAVE , 2023

Oil on canvas

24 x 20 inches

BLEACHED BY THE SUN, 2023

Oil on canvas

24 x 20 inches

ROADTRIP HAZE , 2023

24 x 20 inches

Oil on canvas

CAPE COD LIGHT, 2022

Oil on canvas

14 x 11 inches

HEAT , 2022

Oil on canvas

14 x 11 inches

SUN OVER CLEAR BLUE SEA , 2022 Oil on canvas 14 x 11 inches

CAPE COD SUNSHINE, 2023

Oil on canvas

14 x 11 inches

9 x 12 inches each

OCEAN (BALLSTON BEACH, TRURO), 2022

Triptych, oil on board

SWIMMER, 2023

Watercolor on paper

15 1/2 x 12 inches

NIGHT BOAT, 2022

Watercolor on paper

13 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches

WILD FLOWERS, 2023

Oil on canvas

14 x 11 inches

OCEAN BREAK, 2022

Oil on linen

14 x 11 inches

NUCLEAR PLANT IN SUNSHINE, 2022

Watercolor on paper

11 x 11 inches

13

DIRT ROAD TO THE SEA, 2023

Watercolor and acrylic on paper

1/4 x 10 1/4 inches

13 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches

SUN DOWN, 2022

Watercolor on paper

SUNSET, 2022

Watercolor on paper

10 x 13 1/2 inches

10 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches

BIG BLUE FLOWER, 2022

Oil on canvas

10 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches

MS. PINK, 2022

Oil on canvas

RED FLOWER, 2022

Oil on canvas

10 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches

SUMMER FLOWER , 2022

Oil on canvas

12 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches

Oil on canvas

12 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches

MRS. WHITE WITH HER SHADOW, 2022

BIG RED, 2022

Oil on canvas

12 1/2 x 9 1/2 incces

TWO WHITE FLOWERS, 2022

Oil on canvas

10 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches

IRIS , 2023

Oil on linen

14 x 11 inches

Oil on canvas

10 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches

YELLOW DAHLIA, 2022

MRS. DAHLIA, 2022

Oil on canvas

10 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches

MR. DAHLIA, 2022

Oil on canvas

10 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches

PURPLE FLOWER, 2023

Watercolor on paper

11 1/2 x 11 inches

KATHRYN LYNCH

American artist, born in Philadelphia, PA

Lives and works in Catskill, NY

EDUCATION

1983 BFA, William Smith College, Geneva, NY

1991 Skowhegan, Skowhegan, ME

1990 MFA, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

AWARDS

2018 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow Award

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2023 Here comes the sun and other situations, Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson, WY

2023 Elsewhere, The Drawing Room Gallery, East Hampton, NY

2022 RestlessNights, Private Public Gallery, Hudson NY

FieldsofTime, Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson, WY

2021 BetweentheStreets, Turn Gallery, Palour Room, New York, NY

Islands, The Drawing Room Gallery, East Hampton, NY

KathrynLynchRecentWorks, Zephyr and Maize, St. Petersburg, Russia

2020 FarAwayHome, Sears Peyton Gallery, New York, NY

2019 HotDaysandNights, Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson, WY

2017 SpoonbillSeries, curated by Madeleine Mermall, Brooklyn, NY

2016 Sears Peyton, New York, NY

Tayloe Piggot Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY

2015 UpatNight, Senaspace, New York, NY

Maine, Sears Peyton Gallery, New York, NY

2014 TugTug, Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY

2013 ASilentLanguage, Sears Peyton Gallery, New York, NY

lavieentugboat, Senaspace, New York, NY

The Little Gallery, Sharon Springs, NY

2012 KathrynLynch,Dogs, Sears Peyton Gallery, New York, NY

2011 RiverTugs, Tayloe Piggot Gallery, Jackson, Wyoming

2010 ChoppyWaters, Sears Peyton Gallery, New York, NY

2009 KathrynLynch,HerDaysandNights , Sears Peyton Gallery, New York, NY

2008 HerDaysandNights, Sears Peyton Gallery, New York, NY

2007 Nina Freudenheim, Inc., Buffalo, NY

2005 Paintings:TheCity, Alysia Duckler, Porland Oregon

2004 PaintingtheTown, Victoria Munroe Fine Art, Boston, MA

2002 Alysia Duckler, Portland, Oregon

1996 CharlesCowles, Project Room, New York, NY