Art Blog - Lynne Hurd Bryant

I have had what I hope is an epiphany. That is to say, I hope I don't move back into the cave of my own reticence and fear. Please bear with me here, my mind is running in two circles. I am 52. I became a grandmother for the first time last December and the second time in January. I wanted to be a grandmother while I was still young enough to chase them and spend time with them. I had an excellent grandmother and I wanted to be an excellent grandmother. It is a distinct, marked point of transition in one__™s life, being a grandparent. It is a rite of passage of a sort, and as my oldest son is 29, it is one I had waited for a bit longer than anticipated. I had another life mapped out for myself at 21, and it didn__™t include getting married and having children… Continue reading… 0 comments

From the Dark Night into the Light I had the opportunity to revisit a blog when it was published in Fine Art Views. (Dark Night of the Artistic Soul, February 10, 2012.) It was written two years ago this month, in February 2010. At that time, I had been working in watercolor approximately six months, and that is almost all the experience I had with the medium. I obtained my BFA in 1983. That summer I found myself pregnant and got married. I went on to have several more children, got through a divorce and had no time to paint. During those 26 years, I would often remark that I had the "soul of a watercolorist" in a rather grandiose way like I knew anything about the medium, or myself as an artist much less that I would ever actually find this to be my truth… Continue reading… 0 comments

I am frustrated. My life has reached a rather frenetic level. I am in a wet paper bag without the ability to navigate my way out of it. I am a single woman, an artist and a full time corporate worker. I am responsible for every thin dime I have to spend. I have no safety net, no spouse and no trust fund, but I have two jobs, one of which I work every day of the year, as in every day of the year. I am responsible for my own meals and my own housekeeping. I have grown children whom I chase around from time to time, and who often need my financial help, hence the two jobs I work. Sprinkle in some serious health problems just for good measure. My life is full to the brim, even if I don't paint. I have responsibilities to others, but I have them to myself as well… Continue reading… 1 comment

I don't know if being 50 has given me more wisdom about my shortcomings or merely a stronger desire to try to bend myself in new ways. Sometimes, as when I dove into oil painting this summer, I am successful, while in others ways I am not quite so successful. Enter a tempting offer to illustrate a book for an Australian author. Am I game? Sure...knowing full well that I am not an illustrator, that I was taught to paint what I see and to leave imagination out of the equation. Illustrating a children's book requires an imagination and a skill I don't believe I possess. My imagination, artistically speaking, has been painstakingly subdued in favor of a "clean eye… Continue reading… 1 comment