ANN LYNE (b. Richmond, Virginia, 1937)

Painter’s Porch, 1983
Conté crayon

Collection of the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts
The Jack Blanton Collection
Gift of Jack Blanton
2009.2.1

This drawing depicts the cottage where Ann Lyne lived while teaching painting at a girls’ camp at Natural Well in western Virginia. In July of 1983 Lyne wrote to Jack Blanton: “My studio is a huge 25’ x 8’ screened porch just outside my room. It faces hedgerows of cedars and briars that have always reminded me of the tangle in some of Rubens’ pen and ink sketches. The Alleghany Mountains and Jackson River are magnificent and are in full view of the porch too.”

Lyne claims that she began creating tiered drawings such as this one through an unwillingness to edit: “Why make a choice of what to draw when you can cram it all onto one page?” Clearly the paper on which these three images appear was folded at some point into separate drawings. The artist seems to have preferred the composite image, an unfolding view of a much-loved place.