the artist at work
In my orchard when a mother bear meandered between my home and I, we just calmly looked each other in the eye in silent communication. Then she just turned around with her two cubs and went around the other side of the house. She and cubs resumed lounging, playing and munching apples while I watched and photographed (from back inside the house…I do respect that they are wild). Hiking, I have ascended a mountain with a herd of Elk on a parallel ridge…just 80 feet apart doing our own thing. I have watched bobcats kill prey close by and play afterwards on a rock outcropping while I had been arching my arms around doing my Tai Chi. No confronting, no fear… just cohabitating.
This is what I am interested in conveying in my work. My hope is that through viewing the Life in my work people will become more interested in being in our wild places or a the least preserving them for further generations.
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I have always been attracted to large works. While on a trip to visit family in Chicago and Wisconsin I had ‘Out of the Blue’ dropped into The Milwaukee Art Museum where I lucked out and saw Tom Uttech’s Magnetic North show that was HUGE! Mega paintings in many rooms, all nature beautifully captured, and I cried.
I knew I was seeing something that was pivotal to my path. It was magnificent. I plan on doing further large works. I love the concept of feeling you are actually in that landscape, not just standing inside looking out, and I love getting my whole body into the action of painting BIG!
I was already studying oils and, out of the blue, the American Academy of Art switched my registration to a pastel figurative class as the oil class had I signed up for was filled. I don’t know if I would have pursued this incredible medium on my own, but I am so very grateful I was pushed into it!
These days the studio pastel Landscapes I have created are done with a painstaking process involving creative wordplay, lots of sketches, and dozens of photographs in Photoshop. To see how, go to my Facebook page- the Dec. 6, 2015 post called Kit Lynch Paints 1, it’s an Adobe Slate production.
