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Linda Lynch's Seed Visual Analysis

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Seed by Linda Lynch resides on the 2nd floor of the El Paso Art Museum, El Paso, Texas. Positioned among more detailed works near a door leading to far older art, Seed stands out by its boldness of color and design. This 1993 work1 offers landscape, abstraction, social comment, and political statement in a seemingly simple painting. Discussing each of these aspects and topics directly related can potentially take hours but I will endeavor to keep it reigned in. The many facets of this painting are what called my attention and curiosity to it.

Seed is an oil on panel, two-dimensional painting using a complementary palette of blue and oranges to depict a seed sprouting through the earth. Centered on the work is the image of a seed …show more content…

While the depiction is presumably a seed in dirt one is unaware of the context beyond that. Conceivably this could be in a planter on the porch or a glass jar in a laboratory just as easily as a grain in a farmer’s field. In Malcolm Andrews’ rather lengthy discussion on landscape he offers3,”It (landscape) is land organized and reduced to the point where the human eye can comprehend its breadth and depth within one frame or short scan.” Given this definition Seed would definitely fall into the category of landscape despite its technically incorrect …show more content…

Pepe Karmel tells us “The formal qualities of an abstract painting or sculpture are significant not in themselves but as part of the work’s expressive message.”4 According to this definition Seed falls whole-heartedly into the category of abstract, specifically referring to the limited color palette and undefined species as previously mentioned. Does the heat of orange with its message of fertility and energy5 contrasted with the “something cool and detached about blue”5 support the expressive message of Seed? Going back to what Linda Lynch said of her work overall, “representation… rather than image”2 color does seem to go beyond a simple choice to symbolic representation and her

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