CAP Artist Registry

3 Snyder Heights
Ithaca, NY 14850

607-273-1364

Lynne@ARTBYLT.COM
http://www.ARTBYLT.COM

I work on a canvas in layers over days or weeks. Acrylic is the perfect medium for me because it dries fast. I work quickly while the paint is wet, covering the whole canvas. The next day I rework it. The painting's past affects its present, leaving traces and influences that subtly or dramatically guide what happens next.

When I go to the blank canvas, it is upright on an easel. I paint standing up, with my stereo blasting anything from Dave Brubeck's "Take Five," Laurie Anderson's "Strange Angels," Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man," to "El Condor Pasa," flute music from the Andes. The rhythms, beats and patterns I hear create a mood that is reflected in the lines, shapes and colors on my canvas. It is an active process that demands a looseness and openness to whatever might happen.

There is always a tension between abandon and control. It is a risk to let the brush or palette knife sweep across the canvas without knowing what will happen. Sometimes the result is an amazing gift, but more often it is a challenge that requires much patient looking to see what the painting requires in order to complete itself.

It's the painting surface that I love - the lusciousness of color in its thick and thin varieties, flat and opaque to keep the eye on the surface, or transparent and airy to suggest deep space. My goal is to stay as close to the edge as possible, to keep that sense of organic happening, as if the painting had grown itself rather than having been crafted by me.