Lynn Criswell

Lynn Criswell’s work is about making sense of the past, reconciling it with the present, and recognizing where the notion of choice has been illusory for many of us, particularly if we are women. Her pieces focus on gender stereotyping and childhood. They drive home how astonishing early in life (and how cheerfully) gender-based messages are internalized. Pinpointing the cruelty of which children can be capable, some of the works reveal how effectively children absorb divisive beliefs and prejudices. Criswell’s work gives pause, urging one to wonder that adults do not see more clearly how certain types of socialization distort and narrow the ways in which children might otherwise develop.

The specifics of Criswell’s work stem from the biases of gender training, both personally experienced and witnessed. Realization of the significance of these experiences often came much later than the events themselves. Indeed, the insidious effects of apparently innocuous experiences gives them a kind of timeless significance in that while stemming from the past, they infuse both the present and the future. Did she have a miserable childhood? No. This is precisely the point; the experiences treated in her work were a common aspect of growing up in a Californian suburban neighborhood in the 1960s. The danger lay in the apparently harmless nature of growing up in a middle class, tragedy-free household. Moreover, few would perceive anything other than the delightful and romantic in the "child’s play"--the verses and games--now indelibly impressed on all of our memories. And Criswell’s works certainly do exude an element of this charm--but with a sting. She states that her paintings are "essentially self-portraits that have become a succession of personal mythologies." Mythology is a meaningful choice of terminology, evoking origins, explanations, the ordering of life, and the unknowable. It implies the force of implicit teaching, when of learns through stories, play, rhymes, and gaming without realizing that one is assimilating life’s lessons. LYNN CRISWELL’S BIO BY: ROBYN G. PETERSON, Ph.D. (Curator of Art-Turtle Bay Museums and Arboretum on the River)