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Artist celebrates 'comeback'

By Robert Merritt
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

Ann Lyne knew all along that her life had to be that of an artist, but there were always outside pressures. Pursuit of art has never been easy; the decisions have always been tough.

"It seems to me that as long as I can remember, even as a child with my drawings, that I wanted to be an artist," Ms. Lyne said one recent morning in her Fan studio. "My father was a builder of Williamsburg houses; he was a man of high standards, with careful attention to details, and my mother always made me aware of texture and color. They made me see things, experience things visually. I believe I was 10 when I took my first art class at the Virginia Museum, but then there were a lot of outside pressures."

First there was peer group pressure in school, then came marriage, a family, financial responsibilities as a single parent with three children to raise. But still, there was always the need, a need that had to be acknowledged, a career she could never quite resist.

An exhibition of Ms. Lyne's recent paintings will open this afternoon at the University of Richmond's Marsh Gallery, and it is an important milestone in the "comeback" career of the 42-year-old artist. Featured in the show, which will remain on view through Jan. 30, will be works painted the past two years during residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Sweet Briar and at the Yaddo retreat in Sarasota Springs, N.Y.

"It has been only three years since I've really been back, fully involved in my art," Ms. Lyne said. "The girls are now 21, 16 and 11 years old, and they have been completely supportive. They keep my honest and flexible; they take my art very seriously and they never allow me to balloon myself...they tell me what they like and don't like. The 11 year old came to me just last week and said she didn't like a painting because the structure was weak."

The road from her days as a high school artist to a present with children (all with artistic interests) in high school and college, has been full of twists and turns. There was even a 10-year period when she just about gave up her painting, except on very rare occasions.

"I think peer group pressure had a lot to do with it, particularly when I was in school," Ms. Lyne explained. "I listened to everybody and I just drifted into a college [Queens College in Raleigh, N.C.] that did not have a serious program for training artists. It was my senior year before I came back home, to Richmond Professional Institute.

"Then I met Theresa Pollak in the registration line and she looked at my portfolio. She looked at my work, then looked at me and said 'you'll have to start school all over again.'"

Ms. Lyne graduated from R.P.I. in 1958 and almost immediately married and moved to northern Virginia, where her husband worked as a nuclear engineer (at Ft. Belvoir) and attended law school (George Washington University). She spent her time working in a graduate program in aesthetics and the history of art criticism at American University, and then came the children.

"I won a Certificate of Distinction at the Virginia Museum in 1963, for an engraving, and then I had the three girls. I didn't do anything for about 10 years - we moved back to Richmond in 1968 - and then about 1973 I started getting back into it."

With the three girls to raise, Ms. Lyne continued to hold "non-artistic" jobs, but the tension continued to build. "At first I didn't have any professions here to communicate with; I kept in touch with Theresa Pollak, then became friends with Nell Blaine and John Torres, and they encourage me to apply for a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts at Sweet Briar. In 1976 I made the decision to get really serious about my art and see if I really had anything to say.

[[note]]
Note on Ann Lyne
acquaintances?
I have exchanged letters + seen her slides but I've never met her! I wrote letters for her based on her slides and on Theresa's recommendations
NB 2/82 [[/note]]

"In 1979, I went to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for two months, and that's where it all really came together," she continued. "It was the first time I'd ever been able to paint all day long, with no responsibilities; a change to have my materials and all that time, with no excuses, just all that opportunity

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[[Image]]
Staff Photo by Lindy Keast
Ann Lyne's art is focus of UR exhibit

Ms. Lyne reaches 'milestone'

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to work."
The work from that summer resulted in a one-woman show at Richmond's former Scott-McKennis Gallery. She returned to the Virginia Center again in the summer of 1980, then spent six weeks in 1981 at the prestigious Yaddo retreat, a 40-acre estate in New York.

"These summers have been wonderful experiences, and when I come home I try to have a lot of order and structure in my life, so that I can let myself go in my work," Ms. Lyne noted. "I'm up every morning at 5:30 and run, then at 7, I send the children off to school and I'm at the studio by 9:30 and stay, usually, until 3 o'clock."

In addition to her paintings, which usually deal with interiors and still life, Ms. Lyne has also been working on life drawings during rehearsals of the Richmond Symphony, the Sinfonia and the Richmond Ballet. She also hopes to do drawings with the Virginia Opera Association when it comes to Richmond with its production of "La Traviata."

"I attended some life drawing classes with John Torres at VCU," Ms. Lyne said, "but I find that I prefer dealing with the figure in a movement situation, in rehearsals, with instruments and props. It has become a very important side of my work."

For the coming summer, Ms. Lyne has applied for residencies at Yaddo and at the McDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Her children - the oldest is a painter and writer, the 16-year-old is interested in photography and the youngest in the cello - are all looking forward to a summer at Camp Appalachia in Covington.

Richmond Times-Dispatch
Sunday, January 10, 1982