Fred Lynch
Rhode Island School of Design
Visiting the Relatives: Drawing the Past, Place by Place
Panel: Biography
Fred Lynch (Professor of Illustration at RISD) previews his new book, Visiting the Relatives, which is a deep dive into the history of his immigrant ancestors. As yet unpublished, it represents years of onsite drawing and research. He will also share his practice as a visual correspondent and how it relates it to his teaching.
Starting from his own home and working back in time, Fred Lynch followed genealogical research to the addresses of his immigrant forbearers — taking him to unfamiliar places, sometimes within miles of his everyday life. There he sat and drew, bearing witness, on paper. So little was known about from where his family came — so much was forgotten, lost, or purposely left behind. Drawing onsite became an act of exploration, reflection, and documentation. When one is facing one’s own story, unassuming places become historic sites. Social and environmental change is revealed in the layers of history. For this illustrator and educator, looking back was less sentimental than sobering. Created in a time of divisive debate regarding immigration and colonialism, this artist found poignant examples at his ancestor’s doorsteps. Lynch’s American heritage was examined and presented from a from a sidewalk perspective —driven by illustration.
In his teaching, Fred Lynch asks his students to walk away from their monastic practices. To be hunters and gathers of stories, whether as flâneurs seeking serendipity, or as reporters chasing topics. For Visiting the Relatives, this professor practiced what he preaches. He doggedly followed his forebears for years, which took him from the industrial city of Providence, to an abandoned cottage in a windswept field on the coast of Ireland, to deep-wooded Nova Scotia, and back in time to the oldest wooden house in the United States (1636) — the nearby home of his 11th great grandparents.
Fred Lynch graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 1986 and has been creating illustrations for a broad range of national clients ever since. He has worked in publishing, advertising, and corporate communications and has won recognition from The Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, Communication Arts magazine, Print magazine, American Artists magazine and The Norman Rockwell Museum. He has been a member of RISD’s Illustration faculty since 1989 and began teaching full-time, as a professor, in 2015. He also taught for many years at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA, and chaired his department for more than a decade. Lynch was the recipient of awards for teaching excellence at both institutions. He lives outside of Boston.
Beyond publishing, Fred Lynch has exhibited his works in many exhibitions. Currently, a selection of his renown former-students’ works hangs along with his in an exhibition that he co-curated entitled, Writing with Pictures at the Cahoon Museum of American Art on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.