Renting Software

"Scratch, scratch, scratch with a pen. Every line comes from him. He is incredible." Irene Dodge, the owner of Elements Art Supplies remains awed by the detail and precision of Lyndon Tewksbury, a local artist whose work with lines and the abstract fills scores of canvases. His art filled the Original Fine Art Gallery, located within Elements, until late November, bringing a new dimension of talent to the art space. Each piece can be left to the imagination to find meaning behind it, but Lyndon admits every time he begins, he has a clear canvas in his mind. "I tend to try to leave my mind out of it and make a connection with my subconscious," he reveals. "[Carl] Jung called it 'the collective unconscious.' It's like an ocean in all of us." Connecting with his subconscious mind, he says, keeps him complete, and without consistently creating artwork, he is unfulfilled. While his mind is cleared and a new piece is in the works, it rarely enters his mind as a concrete idea before his hand begins laying out the premise before him. "I'm much more intuitive," Lyndon says as he muses over the prospect of contemplating art. "Things do not go through my mind as much as straight to art." His title given by the gallery is "Master of Line," a label Lyndon is unsure of.

"I think that is a joke because I talk about Thomas Kincaid a lot, and he is the Master of Light. It's nice, though."

He embraces the term "iconoclast," someone who hopes to deconstruct established order and religious symbolism. Instead, he looks towards his own personal heroes of art, generally those of the American Expressionism period, a backlash at the European affect on art. The influences for his style of artwork have come from a variety of sources, one of his favorites being Alberto Giacametti, a famed painter and sculpture of the mid-twentieth century who once said he saw objects as disconnected and "surrounded by slices of space." The freeness of his lines are what inspires Lyndon most. "Alberto's Village," a Tewksbury cityscape, where the negative space is created from erasure marks throughout, is the namesake of his favorite artist. "I really believe in Lyndon," says Dodge. "He is going to be one of the most important artists of the century. He is so uniquely Lyndon. He does not let anything [influence his art.]" She continues that there are strong influences in his work from the 1940s and 1950s, including Giacametti, but that his art has a unique twist not seen often in other artists. The media he uses may be from anything laying around the house, only sometimes deliberately chosen for its physical properties. Many sketches are created on paper treated with coffee or turmeric. Paintings may be done on burlap or board, bringing a textured pattern and often times color of a former painting through.

"If I don't like something I have done, I just begin painting over it," says Tewksbury. "I do a lot of rubbing off and reworking. That's why I paint more on board than canvas: I'd put a hole through canvas." The layering of paints brings glimpses of different mindsets and ideas to one surface, creating a complex imagery.

In his technical pen works, it is almost as if there are two individual pieces--the first, seen from several feet away--is an overview of finely tuned lines forming a complex geometrical design. The second, seen from just a few inches away, shows the extraordinary detail and precision within the piece. There are full scenes parading by, sometimes organic material, other times cityscapes and human figures. From a distance, his artwork is unmistakably his own. Several pieces may form a theme or continuation, but in the closer realm, it is evident each piece is distinctive to the moment it was created.

"You could take a portion of any of his line drawings and have a whole piece," says Dodge.

The various treatments used may provide a tarnished background for a darker effect-sometimes nearly foreboding.