LYNN WOODS

Painting a Kingston That Was Disappearing

by Robert Brune

KINGSTON — Long before Lynn Woods realized some of her paintings were becoming historical documents, she was simply looking for places that compelled her to paint.

Woods found them throughout an earlier Kingston. There was an abandoned slaughterhouse near her home in the Rondout, the brickyard, industrial tanks and junkyards along East Strand and other remnants of the city’s working past. She spent hours alone painting and drawing in spaces that have since disappeared or been transformed.

“The early industrial paintings have become historical! Because so much of what I painted is gone,” Woods said. She remembers the abandoned industrial sites as “soaring, rubble-strewn spaces” that possessed their own kind of beauty.

More than two decades later, Woods finds herself looking differently at those paintings and at Kingston itself. She appreciates that historic buildings are being restored rather than demolished and enjoys the city’s cafes and other improvements, but acknowledges that the transformation has changed what attracts her as a painter.

Her artistic development has changed as well. Woods, who studied art history in college, has interviewed numerous prominent artists, including Mary Frank and Joan Snyder. Her own influences include Edward Hopper, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Giorgio Morandi and Nicolas Poussin.

Woods describes her sensibility as leaning toward perceptual rather than abstract painting, with an interest in painterliness and suggestive narrative. Workshops with artists she admires have helped her concentrate on basic elements such as shape, tone and color, but she believes finding an individual voice ultimately comes through persistent work and critical observation.

“I’ve learned the only way to develop one’s voice is through the process and a lot of hard looking,” Woods said.

Her memories also document a changing artistic community. When Woods arrived in Kingston in the mid-1990s, she encountered artists who had occupied inexpensive historic buildings and created a community around exhibitions, gatherings and unconventional spaces. First Saturday openings brought artists together, while a biennial sculpture exhibition placed contemporary work among industrial ruins and along the waterfront.

Woods believes much of that earlier community has dispersed, but Art Walk Kingston demonstrated that artistic communities can regenerate. The studio tour introduced her to new artists, reconnected her with old acquaintances and brought an invitation to join a monthly women’s art group.

“So the gallery openings and tours continue to forge community,” Woods said, “which renews itself over time.”