Art for Earth’s sake
By Ben Aaronson/Staff Writer
The Lincoln Journal
Thu Feb 21, 2008, 08:52 AM EST

	This painting by Lincoln artist and environmentalist Lynn Avery is one of several in the series ‘The Sacred Forest’ that will be on display at the M2L Gallery in Boston from Feb. 26 through March 10.

Lincoln - Lynn Avery’s paintings are more than just pretty pictures.

The Lincoln resident paints with a purpose and her art reflects passion for the environment and her fears that it is being destroyed.

“It did become clear that I wanted to make a statement about what I think is happening to our environment. I wanted to really celebrate this beauty that we’re losing,” Avery said.

Avery is gaining attention for her large oil and canvas paintings, which depict elements in nature, particularly trees and sky. More than 15 paintings from her series “The Sacred Forest” will be featured in an upcoming show at the M2L Gallery in Boston. Avery said she uses colors and religious imagery in her work to reinforce the concept that nature should be held as sacred.

“Trees mark the seasons — it’s just so much a part of us. We’re connected to everything else. We shouldn’t be isolated from nature,” she said.

Growing up in rural Connecticut, Avery said she always felt a connection to nature. She recalls fondly taking long walks in the forest with her father, a scientist and nature lover. As a child, her love of nature was matched only by her love of drawing.

“All along the way, I was either drawing or painting,” she said.

After a year of college, doing mostly portraits and life drawings, Avery moved to Europe to study abstract art in Florence and Paris. She returned to the United States a few years later to get married and settled in Cambridge to raise her family.

But Avery soon found her new life as a suburban wife and mother was not conducive to the type of art she aspired to create. Fearing that her work was losing direction, Avery enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

“It was sort of a desperate move on my part. I felt I was deteriorating as an artist. Being a matron in the suburbs didn’t make for great art,” she said.

Reinvigorated by her experience at the museum school, Avery found her style — a mixture of realism and abstraction depicting her most beloved subject: the environment. Her large works of oil on canvas, some as large as 5 1/2 feet by 5 1/2 feet, can take many layers and sometimes many months to complete.

“They do evolve. That’s what I love about oil,” she said.

Avery said her paintings in “The Sacred Forest” series are simultaneously a celebration of nature’s majesty and a warning about its continued destruction at the hands of human beings. Avery said she is very concerned about deforestation and its impact on global climate change. One of the reasons her works are so large is to give them a greater impact, she said.

“In my opinion, there is no other issue,” Avery said. “What does it matter if you’re a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim if you’re facing extinction? The planet will go on without us unless we change in a drastic way.”

Other countries look to the U.S. for leadership on environmental issues, she said. Locally, Avery said she hopes Lincoln will play a leading role in championing the environment.

“I’m hopeful that we can save it if we act in time,” she said.

An active participant in the DeCordova Museum’s corporate art program, Avery’s paintings can be seen hanging in many corporate lobbies and hallways, as well as private galleries and homes. She has also been involved with the Emerson Umbrella Center for the Arts in Concord for about 25 years.

The M2L Gallery will host an artist’s reception for Avery on Tuesday, Feb. 26, from 5-8 p.m., to which all are invited. Avery’s paintings will remain on display at the Boylston Street gallery through March 10.

The M2L Gallery is located at 104 Boylston St. in Boston, next to the Colonial Theater. For more information, visit www.m2lcollection.com.

Avery also shows work at the Canvas Fine Arts Gallery in West Acton. For more information, e-mail Suzanne@canvasfinearts.com

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