Lynn Liotta (May 1953-Sept 24, 2018)
In her earliest abstract works Lynn Liotta mapped traveling patterns that commemorated and reported on routes she had taken as well as projected where she might travel into the future in a tarot-like exploration of inner directions. She preferred bright color, whether acrylic, oil pastels, marking pens or watercolor. Many of her works expressed time, loose time - as experienced traveling, hitchhiking or wandering outside of time. It was a way of working that she developed into non-objective colorful murals on five-foot tall rolls of Canson paper replete with abstracted plant and cosmological forms. Lynn’s intensity was evident in her vivid, bold artwork.
Mostly she continued to be interested in how something becomes itself. Sometimes her subject was uncertainty, the subjectivity of delineation, or irritations that she sometimes mapped out with text. Early on she participated in a group that explored their dreams. Independently, she developed a visual ‘music’ in the Aboriginal sense of ‘dreamtime,’ in which she later found an affinity, going to see exhibitions when shows of these artists were in town. Her ongoing interest in personal and child development and how people learn led her to become a Montessori Teacher and then become an Alexander Technique Teacher added these skills to her teaching.
Throughout the years she often drew and made paintings of her face, and occasionally portraits of others. When asked about the self-portraits, she always laughed saying she was always an available model, although the intensity evident in the portraits leads the viewer to realize that they are about more about ‘being’ than just being an available model. In the painted self-portrait that pleased her most, she appears centered within herself, in a state of calm connectedness, her hands moving through a Chi-Gung gesture, moving energy, and she wears an emblem of spiritual development. This last portrait on canvas, her friends agree, communicates Lynn’s spirit, calm and strength.
Born in Somerville, New Jersey, Lynn attended public schools. She studied political science at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York. After graduation she turned to art, living and working New York City while studying The Cooper Union. Although she initially resisted following in her mother’s footsteps as an educator, she became a certified Montessori Teacher and in 1975 moved to Laguna Beach, California where she bought, ran, and was the principal teacher at The Montessori School. After three years she decided to move to Basel Switzerland. When she returned, she worked at the
Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC and became an early member of the Washington Women’s Arts Center that was down the street from IPS. During this time, Lynn decided that teaching was a great way to earn a living to support time to focus on drawing and painting. She accepted a position with the Evergreen Montessori School in Montgomery County, Maryland, where she taught until 2014 where her innate sensitivities and skills bloomed in devising interesting challenges for her students to whose progress she was completely attuned.
Summers, Lynn often traveled visiting friends in California, Yugoslavia, and gardening.
An avid, masterful gardener, always surrounded by plants, inside and out where she always kept a well-planned, exuberant garden filled with flowers interspersed with herbs, tomatoes, lettuce, eggplants, peppers, usw. and exotics. The Montessori School garden has been named for her. She was equally at home in the kitchen, went on long walks and runs, solo and with friends, and attended concerts of all kinds, theater and poetry readings. She was immersed in the culture of the city and a long-time supporter of the National Museum for Women in the Arts. Most recently she exhibited a work in the exhibition, Lattitude: The Washington Women’s Arts Center at the American University Museum (June 16- August 12, 2018.)
In her earliest abstract works Lynn Liotta mapped traveling patterns that commemorated and reported on routes she had taken as well as projected where she might travel into the future in a tarot-like exploration of inner directions. She preferred bright color, whether acrylic, oil pastels, marking pens or watercolor. Many of her works expressed time, loose time - as experienced traveling, hitchhiking or wandering outside of time. It was a way of working that she developed into non-objective colorful murals on five-foot tall rolls of Canson paper replete with abstracted plant and cosmological forms. Lynn’s intensity was evident in her vivid, bold artwork.
Mostly she continued to be interested in how something becomes itself. Sometimes her subject was uncertainty, the subjectivity of delineation, or irritations that she sometimes mapped out with text. Early on she participated in a group that explored their dreams. Independently, she developed a visual ‘music’ in the Aboriginal sense of ‘dreamtime,’ in which she later found an affinity, going to see exhibitions when shows of these artists were in town. Her ongoing interest in personal and child development and how people learn led her to become a Montessori Teacher and then become an Alexander Technique Teacher added these skills to her teaching.
Throughout the years she often drew and made paintings of her face, and occasionally portraits of others. When asked about the self-portraits, she always laughed saying she was always an available model, although the intensity evident in the portraits leads the viewer to realize that they are about more about ‘being’ than just being an available model. In the painted self-portrait that pleased her most, she appears centered within herself, in a state of calm connectedness, her hands moving through a Chi-Gung gesture, moving energy, and she wears an emblem of spiritual development. This last portrait on canvas, her friends agree, communicates Lynn’s spirit, calm and strength.
Born in Somerville, New Jersey, Lynn attended public schools. She studied political science at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York. After graduation she turned to art, living and working New York City while studying The Cooper Union. Although she initially resisted following in her mother’s footsteps as an educator, she became a certified Montessori Teacher and in 1975 moved to Laguna Beach, California where she bought, ran, and was the principal teacher at The Montessori School. After three years she decided to move to Basel Switzerland. When she returned, she worked at the
Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC and became an early member of the Washington Women’s Arts Center that was down the street from IPS. During this time, Lynn decided that teaching was a great way to earn a living to support time to focus on drawing and painting. She accepted a position with the Evergreen Montessori School in Montgomery County, Maryland, where she taught until 2014 where her innate sensitivities and skills bloomed in devising interesting challenges for her students to whose progress she was completely attuned.
Summers, Lynn often traveled visiting friends in California, Yugoslavia, and gardening.
An avid, masterful gardener, always surrounded by plants, inside and out where she always kept a well-planned, exuberant garden filled with flowers interspersed with herbs, tomatoes, lettuce, eggplants, peppers, usw. and exotics. The Montessori School garden has been named for her. She was equally at home in the kitchen, went on long walks and runs, solo and with friends, and attended concerts of all kinds, theater and poetry readings. She was immersed in the culture of the city and a long-time supporter of the National Museum for Women in the Arts. Most recently she exhibited a work in the exhibition, Lattitude: The Washington Women’s Arts Center at the American University Museum (June 16- August 12, 2018.)