About The Artist

Lynn Basa's work zigzags across the boundaries of painting and object, accessibility and secrecy, doubt and self-assurance. Her many years toiling in the hinterlands of clay and fiber instilled in her a reflexive degree of sophisticated craftsmanship that appears in her paintings - a trait that she pushes against by using techniques that rely more on happenstance and happy accidents than self-conscious mark-making.

 

Most days she can be found in her studio in the storefront of a former sausage shop in the old Polish neighborhood of Chicago. She is a full-time artist, currently attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for an MFA in studio art and critical theory.

 

Artist's Statement

Perhaps because in the first grade my coloring of an apple was held up for ridicule in front of the class when I didn't stay within the lines, I am inspired by artists who are not afraid to make a mess: Cy Twombly, Anselm Kiefer, Joan Snyder, as well as those in the Arte Povera movement such as Alberto Burri and Jannis Kounellis. Whether using beeswax, synthetic polymer, cardboard, walnut ink, or dirt, I let the material be my guide. No matter how pleasing or awkward, each piece is a reflection of my state of mind at the time. The faces of paintings that seemed finished one day are scraped off and entirely reworked the next, only to be scraped off again. The result is a record of second-guessing, self-doubt and finally, closure.