Student Spotlight: Lynne Hundley

Lynne Hundley

One of my favorite things to do with my blog is use it to spotlight and celebrate my wonderful students!

Today I would like to introduce you to artist Lynne Hundley who attended my Paint FEARLESS® Sedona retreat this past May.

Currently Lynne is showing her art in her very first solo-show at the Carrollton Library in Carrollton, Virginia titled Breaking New Ground. Included in the show are a series of paintings she painted while in Sedona. The last I spoke with Lynne, almost all of her paintings have SOLD! Wahoo!

Here is a photo of them displayed so beautifully…

I wish I lived closer to view this show myself.

Here is the powerful artist statement Lynne wrote about Breaking New Ground. I’m certain many of my readers here can relate to her struggle and her triumph too!

One of the hardest things is letting go of familiar ways and trying something new. That’s true for artists, too. We get comfortable with a certain subject or a certain style, with oils or acrylics, with this size canvas and those colors. But sometimes we hear a call to do something else, something we haven’t done before, something we don’t know how to do, something we may never even have seen.

For years I’ve wanted to do abstract painting. I’ve tried again and again. Only to paint what I already know how to do. So last summer I decided to take an abstract workshop online. I finished three paintings – very different and I love them. But I couldn’t seem to keep going.

The problem, of course, is that “doing different” is hard. There’s always the temptation to head back to familiar territory where we know what to expect and what’s expected of us. But if we really want to go new places, the only way is to surrender the familiar and head into the unknown.

Last fall I did that – I took a workshop in France. For a week I struggled to paint “new.” By the end, I’d finished one painting that I liked but I hated everything else. (Though a year later, I like them all.)

Wanting more, I headed for the Arizona desert this spring. I painted much like I did in France – do this, do that, do whatever it seems that I should do next. Scribble over it, scrub some of it off, paint over the top covering even the best of what I’ve already done. Fighting with my mind the whole way.

Then I began to go deeper. To let go and paint what my heart wanted to paint. For a week, I did the work that’s been calling me, the work I didn’t know how to do. I let it be OK, that I didn’t know how to do it, that I didn’t know where I was going, or whether I’ll like it when I got there.

“Breaking New Ground” is the work from that journey into painting from my heart. The little paintings I did in France. Most of the big ones are from my Arizona week. I hope you like them… My heart does.

Breaking New Ground runs through Thursday, Sept. 26.

If you live in or near Carrollton, Virginia the library is open weekday afternoons, Tuesday evening and Saturday morning and is located at 14362 New Haven Town Lane, Carrollton, Virginia.

Please feel free to contact Lynne on Facebook if you’d like to view it with her personally and hear the stories behind the paintings.

Congratulations Lynne! It was such a pleasure to paint with you in May and an even bigger joy to witness your huge success! Congrats!

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