define his style
David Keith Lynch is a member of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service research scientists Donald Lynch and Edwina (Sundholm) Lynch )’s first child, was born in Missoula on January 20, 1946, but lived there only for a short time. The family soon moved to Boise, Idaho, and then to Spokane, Washington.
Mr. Lynch was impressed by the lush woodlands of the Northwest, which was the setting for “Blue Velvet,” “Twin Peaks” and its 1992 film prequel, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.”
Donald Lynch was transferred east; his family moved first to Durham, North Carolina, and then to Alexandria, Virginia, where David attended high school and became interested in painting. After graduation, he studied at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, before entering the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1966.
Philadelphia, then in a state of urban decay, was a revelation. Lynch said in a 1997 interview that the city had “a great atmosphere—factories, smoke, railroads, restaurants, the strangest characters and the darkest nights.” “I saw vivid images – plastic curtains held together with Band-Aids, broken windows stuffed with rags.”
Mr. Lynch, who created morbid, tomboy-like canvases under the spell of Francis Bacon, began incorporating film loops into his paintings. Although he dropped out of art school in 1967, he stayed in Philadelphia for three more years, painting and making short films.
