Artists

Sammi Lynch

Press release

Sammi Lynch begins by working from life with pastel on paper out in the landscape. These spontaneous drawings hold an energetic directness which Lynch then brings into the studio. Translating from her drawings as well as from memory, she uses oils to compose scenes that are more resolved, distilling the unruliness of the outdoors into fields of colour and expressive line. Her paintings evoke layered geologies, recalling places that feel simultaneously both geographically specific and universally shared.

Many of Lynch’s poetic terrains are unpopulated, but they often show the signs of human influence: a rickety fence or the winding ruts of tracks, for example. In one work, two figures stand sentinel in a mountain pool, as much a part of their surroundings as the rocks that litter the water’s edge, emphasising the intertwined relationships between human beings and their environments. Lynch depicts the swimmers in a moment of stillness, as though caught taking the deep breath before the plunge into the icy water. This is indicative of Lynch’s approach to capturing scenes which are frozen in time, but which are also charged with the latent potential of motion, liveliness, and change.