David Lynch’s framed art is weird. Beautifully, brutally weird.
It feels like something you’d stumble across in a forgotten room-smoke-stained walls, flickering light, a faint hum you can’t place. You don’t know what it means, but it pulls you in anyway. That’s kind of the magic.
It’s hard as you get older, because your early teen self was enamored with the curious, slightly left of centre influences, pushing yourself to see what draws you in. For me David Lynch was one of those artists. Most people know Lynch for Twin Peaks or Eraserhead, but his paintings, drawings, and mixed-media pieces are a whole other layer of his universe. They’re messy, textured, scratched-up little worlds. Bits of charred wood, scribbled text, crusty paint. Titles like Suddenly My House Became a Tree of Sores or Bob Finds Himself in a World for Which He Has No Understanding. You read them and go… “yeah. okay. same.”
What I love about it is that it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be anything. It just is. It exists in its own logic. Unfiltered, a little haunted, totally alive.
That’s the kind of energy I gravitate toward, where things don’t need to be polished or perfect to be powerful. Where feeling comes first. Lynch’s work feels like storytelling through instinct, not explanation. And honestly, that hits home. It’s raw and weird and human in a way that makes sense to me, at what feels like my whole life, even if I can’t explain why.
I was privileged to visit the Between Two Worlds exhibition at GOMA in Brisbane back in 2015. I went twice. It was as engaging and magical as I imaged, and I did feeling more connected to his work after leaving the gallery, and after each visit.
David Lynch passed away this year. I was emotional about the loss, but there was also a sense of celebrating his next metamorphosis. I reminded me of the exhibition and I felt even more grateful to have been able to experience his genius. Below are a few photos and a short video of my visit.
The Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane did an amazing tribute, be sure to check it out here
His art reminds me that it’s okay to not always make sense. That sometimes the best kind of story is the one that leaks out through the cracks. That’s where the good stuff lives.
So yeah; here’s to the strange, the scrappy, the softly unhinged.
More of that, please.
CW…