The most powerful influence in Lynda D’Amico’s development as an artist has been her relationship with her friend and mentor Julio Alpuy. Alpuy is the only living artist of the original Joaquin Torres-García workshop, El Taller Torres-García, the most significant art community of its time in Latin America. (1943-1962) It was Alpuy who inspired Lynda’s passion for painting.
Lynda’s work is guided by the principals of abstraction. To “simplify” in order to expose the subject’s essence. Though her work is representational, it is first and foremost a painting constructed with elements of line, tone, and form. Lynda comments, “the still life in a painting is not merely an illusion of the real thing. It is transposed into a plastic equivalent, taking on its own reality independent from its inspiration.”
Using a limited palette, as adopted from Torres, Lynda is forced to pay close attention to tone. Rather than attempting to imitate the exact color in a still life, for example, she aims to capture the expression of that color. The red that represents the color of an apple, is for the painter, first a red.
D’Amico sometimes uses a mathematical system of proportion called the “Golden Section” in order to create even greater unity in her work. Much of the great art of ancient cultures was constructive, based on a geometric plan. This included Egyptian art with its pyramids, Gothic cathedrals, Mayan art, and art of the Inca. This system of proportion was believed to reflect the harmonic order of the universe and establishes unity by relating the parts to each other and to the whole. Lynda’s strives to create a painting where all of the elements work together to form a new reality of structural and tonal harmony. When art is able to express the essential truth of the model within the essential realm of painting, it becomes both inventive and poetic, revealing a metaphysical and spiritual dimension.
