Lynne Taetzsch
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Improvisation in Color
My painting process is analogous to the improvisation of a jazz musician. I start out with a selection of colors, shape them into a beginning melody, and then move out further and further to see where the riff will take me.
Music is integral to my art. 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.
I currently work in acrylics, which dry fast and allow me to apply several layers, working on the painting over days or weeks until it comes together in an aesthetic harmony. It is 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. Line is another love of mine, and I often draw directly with a tube of paint, dissecting the surface in labyrinthine paths.
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.
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. Yet it is the artist's eye that seeks to prevail, telling the hand to add that last brush stroke which brings it all together.
BIOGRAPHY
Lynne Taetzsch's paintings have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States and abroad, including the Hartley Gallery in Winter Park, Florida; the Alexandria Museum of Art in Alexandria, LA; the Paula Insel Gallery in New York, NY; and the Cosmopolitan Art Association in Seoul, So. Korea.
Taetzsch's paintings and drawings have appeared on the cover or within the journals Central Park, Sun Dog and Pacific Review, as well as on the cover of the book Hot Flashes published by Faber & Faber in 1995. Ms. Taetzsch is a creative writer as well as a painter, and has published short stories and essays in numerous national journals. She has given public readings and art talks in galleries, bookstores, and other cultural organizations.
Taetzsch was born in East Orange, New Jersey, but resides now in Ithaca, New York. She studied fine art at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, the University of Southern California, and the University of California in Los Angles. She is currently a member of the Greater Ithaca Art Trail and the State of the Art Gallery in Ithaca.
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