We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lynn Heinz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lynn below.

Lynn, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I think there’s two answers to that question for me. I was interested in the arts as far back as I can remember. I studied art all through high school and community college. But I didn’t have the skills and knowledge to develop a community and didn’t know how to seek out resources to help . I feared rejection so much that I didn’t apply to art school and completed my undergraduate degree in art history. After university, I was compelled by “good sense” to get a full-time job to pay the rent–and then the mortgage. Once in that cycle, it was near impossible to break free. But I always harbored my love of painting and drawing and took art courses through extended university studies whenever I could. When I retired five years ago, I finally was able to pursue my passion and become a full-time artist. So, I do wish I had started my art career sooner. I feel like I wasted so much time on a job that was not me and did nothing to feed my soul or help me find out who I am. There’s a lot of water that’s passed under that bridge and now I feel the need to get a lifetime’s worth of work done in a short amount of time. However, that all being said, I wonder if I had gone a different path–if I’d gotten a BFA and an MFA and had been working in the arts since college–I wonder if my relationship to my art practice would be different now. I know that there are artists that do the work their entire lives and continue to search and grow and create meaningful work that whole time. But it can be hard and draining. I think you can find yourself in a position where you have to put your art on the back-burner sometimes. You have to make compromises with your time, talent, and resources. But since I have started being a full-time artist at this point in my life, I consider myself to be extremely lucky. I cherish every minute I have in the studio and it never gets stale or boring and I always look forward to the challenges. I have real clarity about my goals and what I need to do to get there. I honestly cannot think of any different life I’d want to be living.

Lynn, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve practiced and studied art in one form or another for as long as I can remember. It’s been my only serious professional goal. I am a painter based in Los Angeles and my practice currently focuses on the figure. Viewers seem to connect easily with images of people. I think the figure in art can convey emotions, states of mind, and narrative effectively and quickly. I’m very interested in memory and how it works to create our own personal narrative. I work a lot with unposed family photos and other found vernacular photographs. My most recent project is an installation of paintings recreating a high school yearbook. I gathered the reference images of students and school activities from random yearbooks all across the country. I didn’t want them to be a real cohort of students who actually were in high school together. I was inspired to do this project by my own memories of high school; how have I changed and what things remain the same? When this installation opened last Fall in a Los Angeles gallery, the response was amazing. People really related to the images individually and as a whole and many visitors, after looking through the paintings, stopped to share their memories, both good and bad, of high school. It was gratifying to be able to connect to so many people and give them a moment to pause and reflect on a part of their lives that, while transformative, they most likely don’t think of often.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

There are many rewards in pursuing an artist’s path. For me, one of the most rewarding is being able to connect with people in a very profound way. When I put a painting up on a wall of a gallery or my studio, I am putting a piece of my heart, my conscious and unconscious self, up for everyone to look at. When someone gazes at one of my pieces and really studies it, they are communicating with me in a non-verbal way. When I make my paintings, they don’t have a specific, inherent meaning. While I include symbols and narratives that are specific to me and to my life, I also intend them to have universal application. If a person talks to me about what the painting means to them, it’s immensely gratifying. Through my solitary work in the studio, my moment-to-moment decisions, I have been able to create something that speaks to a person I don’t even know. I especially enjoy it when someone puts their own meaning or narrative to one of my paintings. Once, when I was just beginning to show my work in public, I had a painting in a gallery and I was not able to attend the opening. A visitor to the gallery messaged me to say that my piece had made her cry. That was an such a moving experience and was extremely meaningful to me in that stage of my career. That kind of experience makes all the work worthwhile.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think that all of us are creative in some way. It’s a part of being human. It’s just a matter of listening, watching, and being aware of what comes up. I do think that some who consider themselves non-creative have the impression that there is a right way and a wrong way to be an artist. That all artists have the same process and that there is a consistent way in which we all approach our work. But it doesn’t really work that way. There’s no specific “way to be an artist”. We all develop different processes, methods, and ways that we work. I work best when I have a specific schedule for when I go in to the studio. I am not a good multitasker so for me, that’s the best way to turn off all the other demands of my life. The time that I am in the studio is sacred. Sometimes I research reference material, look through art books, sketch, work on finished paintings. But, like having a job, whatever it is that I’m doing, that time is dedicated to pursuit of my art practice. Other artists work best when the inspiration hits them, or when they are able to fit their practice into their lives. They have their materials at hand and don’t have a particularly regular schedule for when they work. Once they start though, they can work non-stop until they are satisfied with their progress on a piece. Another example is that I know many artists who regularly put down their ideas in sketchbooks and they amass a library of beautiful sketchbooks they’ve created that are art pieces in themselves. While I love the idea, I have never been able to start the habit of thinking visually in sketchbooks. Everybody’s process is different and there’s no right way or wrong way to be an artist if you are driven to do it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lynnheinzart.com
• Instagram: @lynnheinzart