Gavin Lynch reimagines landscape painting through a unique and innovative style that combines elements of collage and digital manipulation. His approach challenges traditional notions of landscape by creating visually rich and textured canvases that invite viewers to explore complex interactions between nature and the human experience.
Here, we took a moment to discuss his inspirations and creative process.
When did you begin painting?
How do you typically start a new piece, and what does your creative process look like?
These days I typically begin a new piece by making a digital collage on my computer, which serves as a compositional roadmap and sets the thematic and formal tone of what is to come on the canvas. In the past I would figure everything out directly on the canvas, but now find the preparatory works can be quite expansive in the sense that they allow a virtual space to push the formal elements of the work, while allowing me to test multiple iterations of the same work at the same time. I like that at this stage they exist only in virtual form, and are then processed through the analogue act of painting. What does it mean to transform the digital into the analogue, or to bring these digital and virtual spaces into the real world? In a sense I lean into these processes because they act as a mirror of our current times, and our evolving relationship with technology. These collages are comprised of images from my own photographic archive (primarily from my travels in Canada), art historical images, stock photography from the internet and similar digital assets from the creative commons. I’m interested in the juxtaposition of unlikely formal and thematic elements, and how these coalesce into cohesive paintings that speak to our relationship to both nature and technology.
What themes do you explore in your landscapes?
In my landscape paintings I explore themes such as the relationship between nature and technology, climate change, the sublime, science fiction and our changing relationship to the natural world. In many ways the methods I use (digital to analogue and vice versa) are mirrors of the real and virtual spaces we currently inhabit.
What do you hope viewers feel or experience when they engage with your work?
The paintings I create are generally intended to act as contemplative portals for the viewer to engage with and, as such, I am not necessarily looking to illicit specific emotions, but rather to facilitate a subjective experience via these alternative spaces that have one foot in both the real and virtual worlds. I often hear people relating the works to their own past experiences, which I love. I like the idea that paintings can act as time machines for the viewer, transporting them to places and moments of significance in their own lived experience or conversely to some yet realized future. I like that paintings can offer radically different experiences to two people in the same room.
Are there certain regions that your landscapes are based on?
In the past my work has been focussed on specific regions - mostly in Canada - however, at the moment my paintings are mostly developing both virtual and fictional spaces. One such space that I keep returning to is that of the garden. Gardens share a lot in common with the genre of landscape painting: they both strive to bring nature under the creative management of humans, to organize nature in a manner that is accessible on both an aesthetic and spiritual level. They are at once both projections of how we idealize nature and how we are compelled to catalogue and preserve certain aspects of the wild. I feel like both gardens and landscape paintings offer unique mirrors of how we as humans relate to the natural world. Mirrors that hopefully last for many generations to come.
Lynch is currently featured in our group exhibition ‘Uplands’, on view until 2nd November, and is working on his debut RHODES solo exhibition set for Spring 2025.
Email info@rhodescontemporaryart.com to register your interest.
