About

Biography

Cara Lynch is a visual artist who works across media. She is currently making abstract paintings and figurative sculptures. She is a 2020 graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University and received her BFA from Adelphi University in 2012. Recent presentations include Homebodies at 334 Broome, Off the Grid at 5-50 Gallery, and Less is a Bore at Blah Blah Gallery in Philadelphia.

Lynch has created site-specific public artworks across the United States, including permanent installations for NYC MTA Arts and Design, NYC Health and Hospitals, and the City of Glendale in Los Angeles. She has created several temporary large-scale installations including projects for New Jersey Transit, Nashville International Airport, and NYC Department of Transportation. Her work has been featured in publications including Hyperallergic, Architectural Digest, and the Wall Street Journal.

I work in painting, sculpture, and public art. These disparate parts of my practice are unified by the inclusion of patterns or fragments that come together to form a whole.
My work is influenced by historic craft processes: theorem painting, stained glass, metalsmithing, mosaic, appliqué, and embroidery. These aesthetics are a manifestation of autonomy and a way for me to experience visual pleasure.

Sculptures:
My sculptural practice began with a question: How can I act outside of
myself, and what would I do? I combine references to the body with functional
domestic objects. These forms are domestic trappings. They contain myths
of leisure, comfort, and stability.

My subject, the human figure, is both entrapped and enlivened by its form. I
consider my own identity as a woman, at a time when individual agency
and bodily autonomy is being threatened. I think about the ways the body
can be destabilized in these works.

I create uncanny bodies that ask questions about agency, beauty, capitalism, action, and fulfillment. I am particularly interested in creating objects that interact with weather- especially wind and light- in an effort to be present and to explore what makes us feel.

Paintings:
My recent paintings are psychological landscapes. These fractured abstractions consider the literary term “pathetic fallacy,” which is used to describe the attribution of human emotion to nature.

Contradicting associations of beauty, comfort, leisure, and stability, the patterns and fragments of my darkened, splintering landscapes come together to form garden landscapes. Flowers are ravaged by storms. My work in painting explores weather as a harbinger, a specific emotional state, and a force we act with and against. The paintings are about fortitude and perseverance but also what threatens us.

Public Art:
I have been creating large scale public works for over a decade. These projects incorporate bright colors and patterns arranged in abstract, geometric compositions that completely transform their environment. These works are often inspired by quilting and domestic craft techniques that embrace decoration. I recontextualize these aesthetics to reference notions of the "home" and "community" in public space to emphasize our collective agency and indicate that our public spaces belong to all of us.

My recent public works embrace Radical Joy in response to the precarity and anxiety we face every day. I create joyful experiences for visitors, residents, and passersby in the locations where I install my work.