Bill Lynch
b. 1960, United States
d. 2013
Bill Lynch (1960-2013) was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and grew up in New Jersey. He studied art at Cooper Union together with his friend, painter Verne Dawson, who also helped organise the first formal solo exhibition of his work at White Columns, New York in 2014, after the artist’s untimely death. Reviewing that exhibition in the New York Times, Roberta Smith wrote, "Genius lands where genius will, and I'm pretty sure some alighted on Bill Lynch." Subsequent solo exhibitions have been held at The Approach, London (2015); Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin (2015); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2016) and The Approach 2021 (forthcoming). Lynch immersed himself in making drawings and paintings for over three decades, living in New York, California, and finally North Carolina.
Painting onto pieces of salvaged scrap wood (sometimes on both sides), Lynch depicted birds, animals, blossoming branches, waterfalls, Chinese vases, statuettes and landscapes. The artist’s seemingly spontaneous brushstrokes evoke his American roots whilst exposing his fascination with Chinese and Japanese painting (of which he came across through frequent visits to New York's Metropolitan Museum). Painting with confidence and a natural ease, his gestures combine a dry lambent brush and thick pasty paint. The moiré woodgrain on the rough boards often become inherent aspects of his compositions, for example, becoming a still body of water or suggesting a moving sky; knots and grain in the wood seem to inspire the superimposition of moons, mushrooms, flowers or vessels.
Lynch excelled not only at painting on found wood, but also on paper with conté pencil, and as depicted in the pages of the artist's painted book, oil paint. The beautiful and intimate document emphasises the great tenderness and sensitivity with which Lynch treated his beloved subject matter.
A comprehensive monograph ‘Bill Lynch’ was published by Ridinghouse in 2017.