photo credit: Samara Alima
A color shift can hold a memory in place.
Lynne Gillan is a San Francisco artist whose practice moves through color and spatial rhythm. Her work reveals the tension between what’s seen and what lies beneath. She creates abstract, dimensional paintings from individually painted wooden shims, layered with beeswax and pigment (encaustic). Each work is a “lyrical vignette”, rooted in memory and intuition, echoing a shifting light and ever-changing atmosphere.
Her background in interior architecture and design informs her sense of structure and proportion, bringing each composition thoughtful restraint. Her color sensibility emerges through layers of texture, repetition, and subtle disruption.
Drawn to both landscape and minimalism, I’ve long felt a connective thread to painters Richard Diebenkorn and Agnes Martin. Their work feels expansive and measured and deeply connected to place and inner worlds, which guides how I see and compose. Through color and material my work unfolds, responding to memory and the rhythms of place.” — Lynne
E X H I B I T S
2025/2026(coming) 54 Galeria, Fronteras Blandas(Soft Boundaries), Mérida, Mexico
2025 Sealevel, Summer in the Sunset juried group exhibit, San Francisco, CA
2025 Small Works Projects gallery, Summer Open group exhibit, San Francisco
2024 Gallery 16, curated friend wall by Jeffrey Sincich and Rose D’Amato solo exhibits, San Francisco , CA
2024 Transmission Gallery, Pint Size 2, juried exhibit, Oakland, CA
2024 Ekphraestival and Soliloquy Fine Arts gallery, artists and poets collaboration Portland, OR
2023 Select paintings on offer at Park Life II, San Francisco, CA
2023 Open studios holiday faire at Camp Hudson, San Francisco, CA
2022 Soliloquy Fine Arts, Landscapes: inside & out, Two-person exhibit, Portland, OR
2020 de Young Museum, OPEN, juried exhibit, San Francisco, CA
2019 Art at the Hanger, Marin Community Foundation, Ensemble: Selected Artist Members of MOCA, Novato, CA
2019 Marin MOCA, Open to Interpretation, Novato, CA Honorable Mention
2019 MarinMOCA, Artist Members exhibit, Novato, CA