The Lynn Kotula Archive showcases every painting or drawing by Lynn Kotula for which we have a digital image, plus a few paintings that Lynn exhibited for which we have no image. These are the works that Lynn chose to photograph, exhibit and/or keep in her studio.

In the years before digital photography, artists like Lynn went to significant trouble to take (or have taken) slides of their work, label them and store them in plastic sheets. Each image we have of Lynn's paintings or drawings prior to about 2010 represents a significant effort, and indicates that she thought enough of the work at the time to keep a permanent record.

Then in later years, especially after she was diagnosed with cancer, Lynn ruthlessly purged old work from her studio. She did not want all these paintings and drawings to be a burden to her husband once she was gone. She gave some to her friends and destroyed many others - including much of her student work, but also dozens of paintings that she had previously exhibited and offered for sale. So the paintings and drawings that remained in her studio - all of which are in the archive - survived this process.

The 35mm slides of Lynn's earlier work look grainy and blurred; it is hard to remember that this was normal in those days. Also, in many cases their color either was not true to life in the first case, or has shifted over the years. Where possible we have adjusted their color so they represent our best guess as to what the paintings originally looked like. In a few cases we have kept two different-looking images of the same painting, because we don't know which is more accurate.

The metadata - names, dates, sizes, etc. - also represents our best guess, based on the information Lynn left us. Lynn kept very spotty records. We know which paintings she sold from most of her shows, but not always who the buyers were, and not which ones she sold privately, or gave to friends or traded with other artists. She often assigned multiple names to the same painting, listing it as one thing in a price list but writing a different name on the slide of the same painting. She was similarly imprecise about the dates when these paintings were made, and their sizes. Sometimes she wrote one date on the back of a painting, a different date on its slide mount, and then a third date when she exhibited it. Sometimes two slides of the same painting, sitting next to each other in a slide sheet, have different metadata written on them in Lynn's handwriting. And sometimes Lynn wrote nothing at all, and all we know is the date on which the slide was developed.

Where a painting is listed as both Private Collection and Location Unknown, it means that we believe the painting was sold, and we may know the name of the original buyer, but we do not know who has it now. Where a painting is listed as just Location Unknown, it means we do not have a record of the painting being sold or traded, and it was not in Lynn's studio when she died. She may have sold it without recording the sale, she may have given it to a friend, or she may have destroyed it.

If you see a painting which is labeled with incorrect or incomplete information, especially if you actually own the painting, please click on its "Inquire About" link and let us know.