Lynn Rubenzer
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Lynn Rubenzer is a San Francisco-based artist exploring the social underpinnings of the urban landscape. Working primarily as an oil painter, Lynn’s compositions depict densely populated cityscapes—many of which are loosely inspired by San Francisco—with hills and valleys that rise and fall like one great sea of humanity, and where pterodactyls fly by like angels from a cautionary tale and lumbering eyes peer from windows and cracks in the buildings reminding us of the people residing therein.
Often working large-scale, Lynn’s process begins with a monochromatic under-painting where the composition takes shape much like a ghost-ship emerging from a thick bank of fog. It’s a play between the pursuit of a composition and allowing for surprises that appear in the loose paint. Utilizing strong black outlines against a rich earth-tone palette, and shifting between brush and palette knife, her intricate compositions pull together like well-carved jigsaw puzzles where buildings nuzzle and toggle, eventually rising up to a skyline that runs along the horizon like the jagged edge of an oyster shell. In these urban landscapes, Lynn aims to capture humanity as manifested in the city's architecture—a visual metaphor for the inter-connectivity of urban life.
In addition to painting, Lynn has created fantastical storefront window installations at 826 Valencia, a nationally recognized non-profit writing center in the Mission District [2008-2011], and has completed several commissioned public murals around San Francisco, including on the ground level of the Salesforce Transit Center [2018] and front facade of The Midway Arts Complex [2015].
Awarded ‘Critic’s Choice/Best Of Bay’ by San Francisco Magazine for her portraits of San Francisco, Lynn has exhibited her work at art galleries, Stanford University, San Francisco City Hall, non-profit organizations and beloved local haunts. Lynn also hosts a one-easel Art Show in a quaint storefront window on Valencia Street [between 19th & 20th] in San Francisco’s Mission District, where passersby can catch her latest work on steady rotation illuminated under spotlight all night.
Lynn paints full-time at her Hunters Point Shipyard studio. Private studio visits welcome by appointment. She will be hosting Fall Open Studios during Weekend #1—October 22 & 23, 2022, from 11am-6pm both days.
