David Lynch

(American, born 1946)

David Lynch is a contemporary American artist known primarily for his films which meld small town Americana with humor, poetic sound design, and horror. His movies Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001), and Inland Empire (2006), are considered cult classics, as is his television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991). Along with his films, Lynch also creates macabre canvases, photographs, and assemblages that are influenced by the paintings of Francis Bacon. “The only way to find the new is to start different things and see if there’s something that can come out of experimentation,” Lynch once reflected. Born on January 20, 1946 in Missoula, MT, he was a member of the Boy Scouts as a child, and eventually reached the rank of Eagle Scout. After a failed attempt to study with the Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka in Austria, he enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He moved to Philadelphia a few years later, continuing his art education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Lynch credits his experience living amidst Philadelphia’s crime-ridden streets and industrial decay as a catalyst for his filmmaking. In 2016, the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life was released. The film delves into Lynch’s past as well as his use of transcendental meditation in the process of forming ideas. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.