Anne Lynch in her studio in South London
VICE PRESIDENT
ELECTED ARWS 2019 & RWS 2021
Anne Lynch, born in Edinburgh, studied at Edinburgh Art College then moved to London where she now has a studio, and another in France. She has always worked in watercolour and uses collage to sustain the mark and luminosity. She won the Purchase Prize at the RWS Contemporary Watercolour Exhibition in 2017, the Art Critic Award in the RI at the Mall Galleries in 2018 and was shortlisted for the Drawing Bursary Discerning Eye exhibition in 2014.
Anne says of her work, "My first introduction to painting was landscape in Scotland and when I moved to London I missed the easy access to that source and grew more reliant on an internal journey.
I use watercolour as I love the delicacy and immediacy of the mark. Collage helps me sustain the luminosity of the colour and create a playfulness within the story.
Story telling, myths and dreams showed me a useful way to introduce my own idiosyncrasies within my work. For example in myths the spirit of the person is often held within vessels, issues around caring and nurturing are laced through these stories and also in my work.
My fascination with hands and the many associations with them, caring, protecting, nurturing, tender, or symbolically fate, grew from studying the Cycladic figures.
Recent work is inspired by the scale we adults are to children. They barely reach our knees when they first walk and it must be difficult for them to see our faces which appear so far away. So I am playing with that theme and using scale to emphasise their vulnerability. Also the responsibility we have as the adults to secure them a safe world.
Sometimes parts of objects or faces are included so that the story in the painting is not necessarily complete, like moments in a day. Our memories of a day often are just a few moments here and there.