((L-R) Freedom, Michael, Transcending by Lynn Hardy)

A Spotlight on Artist Lynn Hardy

Ever since she was little, accompanying her dad to classic car shows, artist Lynn Hardy recalls seeing the world in a different light, “From the time I was a child, I’ve seen the world in a different way,” Lynn said. “When my dad would take me to car shows, I wouldn’t just look at the cars but I would examine how the light reflected off of the chrome and the curves of the body.”

Inspired by the bright colors and aesthetic designs of classic cars, Lynn remembers drawing plenty of pictures for her mom to ceremoniously hang on the kitchen fridge. This simple act of support validated Lynn’s drive to become an artist, which was only furthered by high school art classes, memorable teachers and even some awards for her art that she won at a young age.

Lynn believes that some people are just good at different things; from musicians to mathematicians, everyone has a thing that fulfills them. “I knew as a kid that this was my gift,” she said. “I was always good with visual representations and sharing my perspective.”

While there was abundant inspiration to be found, Lynn also recalls being told that, “dead artists are the only artists who ever made a living.”

Where others might have found discouragement, Lynn discovered a tenacious drive and a confident view of the future, “This made me more determined to find a way to keep creating and somehow make a living at it or starve trying,” she said.

For some time, Lynn would channel her creativity in other ways, from graphic design to software engineering, “Even though programming is a form of creating, it doesn’t come close to the rawness of painting, and well, sometimes painters just need to be raw and messy,” Lynn said.

Her love for the visual arts, and specifically oil painting, would be curated during a time when art had taken the role of a hobby for Lynn, who was mostly using her talent to create family gifts and paintings that she hung on her own walls.

One day, when a new friend who happened to be a painter saw the art on her walls, he understood her potential and her passion, and offered to mentor her as an artist. In what seems like a destined meeting, this friend happened to have learned under the famous Bob Ross, worked on the production crew for his show and was even close personal friends with Ross’s mentor, William Alexander. “He taught me a technique called wet-on-wet oil painting,” Lynn said. “He taught me many of the technical skills that I still use today.”

Wet-on-wet oil painting, also called alla prima, is a style of oil painting where the artist applies a new layer of paint on top of a still-wet layer, rather than waiting for a layer to dry before applying another. This style was used on Bob Ross’s show and allowed him to complete entire paintings in one episode.

Lynn’s journey as an artist, like many of the greats in her profession, is not free from tribulation; she beckons back to her motto that, “sometimes painters just need to be raw and messy,” and said, “That theory proved itself around the time of a painful divorce with two beautiful souls in tow. I picked up my brush again after a decade-long hiatus. I had to paint.”

Inspired by heartbreak and newfound independence, Lynn painted Freedom, a feminine, symbolic representation of literal freedom that bounds across the canvas in bright blues and whites. Lynn said that “She is a figure, boundless and brazen, ascending from the darkness and into the light.”

Her next work, Transcending, would portray another feminine figure in bright color, breaking away from grays and browns, moving towards warmer tones of yellow and red. Keeping with her authentic style, the painting has fragments of brush bristles dried into the paint.

“These two paintings are my essence,” Lynn said. “The brush strokes express. The colors emote.”

Since those paintings, Lynn has shifted her focus and continued to pursue new styles. She spent some time painting angels, coalescing with a beautifully stark depiction of the Archangel Michael over a contrasting dimensional background. She completed work on a painting depicting a Musk Ox, referencing a photo that was taken in Alaska. Composed of mostly bright pinks and purples, Lynn shares a new perspective on something that many people might find relatively one-dimensional, “The photo had already been taken, so I wanted to take it in my own style,” she said.

In fact, this notion of putting her own bright and grand style on seemingly ordinary subjects carries throughout her work, as Lynn is always trying to show her viewers something unique, “I cannot control what the viewer sees, but I want the viewer to see something new,” she said.

In the pursuit of sharing her perspective and showing the viewer something new, Lynn considers them one and the same, “That’s the cool thing about just sharing my own perspective,” she said. “It will always be new to the viewer.”

More recently, Lynn has gotten back to her roots and found her love for Americana. She’s been working on multiple paintings of classic cars, all of course in her own style. Just like when she was little, Lynn is still looking at how light reflects back to the viewer, giving a, “seductive wink and a nod,” she said.

As an artist, Lynn has short term and long term goals, “My goal in 2023 was to bring what I have in my house and studio into my public. I wanted to reach out to the artist community and local businesses to display art and to connect with other local artists who I admire.”

In the long term, Lynn hopes to have developed a body of work that displays her unique style, and she’s hoping to see some of that work on the walls of contemporary art galleries. It would seem that she is on the right path, and that she has already carved out a unique style: taking what we can’t see, like freedom, angels, or just light reflecting off of a hood into thin air, and bringing it to life by simply sharing her own perspective.