Within the Modernist tradition, countless artists chose formal analysis as the focus of their creative endeavors, while many others considered “art” as a kind of vessel into which to pour personal (emotional, psychic, meta-physical, political, etc.) concerns. The latter tendency is generally termed as “Expressionism” or “Romanticism”. (Of course, such terms are whimsical, as not.) The most compelling Expressionists – Van Gogh, Pollock, Rothko, etc. – invented unexpected new forms which contribute as much to the “language of art” as do the more intellectually generated accomplishments of the “Formalists.”

To my mind, Lyn Horton falls in the Romantic/Expressionist camp. I say that after having observed her development over a number of years during which time I have witnessed her passionate effort to connect her feelings with the multilayered images which constitute the body of her work. Working from the center of her psychic life, she experiments with a broad range of materials and methodologies as she invents here, borrows there, edits and discards and recovers until finally an image- a “work”- appears which corresponds with her feelings: in general, if not in particular. Only then can she let it go, to pause, and then, like Sisyphus she begins again, begins a new work. All the while an ever-increasing richness and profundity of expressive character informs the output of this fine artist.

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