The past several years I’ve focused on eliminating all but the most essential lines and shapes. Clean and uncluttered individuals or compact groups seem to dominate the pieces, and if I use color, it’s only to serve the narrative. When patterns emerge, they are contained or restricted. Shapes I once discarded from my previous work return as new elements in these drawings. Texture, either implied or real, create interest and depth. The drawings, of course, are figurative; I add elements from nature to drive new storylines. I always welcome individual interpretations and hope to encourage conversations among viewers. For me, that is a measure of success. Finally, the weather, culture, and my own personal environment always inform the final results. Others have defined me as an illustrator and feminine artist; to that, I can only say “thank you.

I was born in Milwaukee in 1951 and raised in neighborhoods throughout the city filled with diverse and interesting characters. My earliest teachers were Catholic nuns; these sisters instilled in me a peculiar (but beneficial) combination of respect, fear, and beautiful penmanship. Fortunately, they also valued drawing skills. Mentorship played a crucial role in my development as an artist. My teachers expected nothing less than honesty, integrity, and perhaps most importantly, good work. I received my art education certification after earning a BFA with a concentration in Painting and Drawing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. A rewarding and fulfilling career in public education soon followed. While teaching I continued to draw and paint, albeit in fits and starts. Family life and a career often took priority as expected, but I never forgot to follow Virginia Woolf’s advice to find “a room of one’s own.”

Over the years I have had my work exhibited in cities and towns scattered across the Upper Midwest. Now, one my primary joys includes installing artwork with fellow artists at the Pumphouse Regional Arts Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Most important to me are what we all affectionately call “The Nine” – nine women artists who have sustained, encouraged, critiqued, and cajoled me into making art, even during those moments when the urge doesn’t quite strike. Without them, I’m not sure I would be producing work into my seventies. But we do – together and independently. All my thanks to them, and of course, to my extremely supportive family.

Lynne Burgess has been a longtime admirer of Lynn Hobart and her work and is honored to speak about it at the reception.  They are part of the La Crosse Area group called “The Nine” which meets regularly to critique and support each other’s work.  They had a group show at the Heider Arts Center in West Salem, Wisconsin in 2019.  

Lynne Burgess is a published author, with work in many small press journals and publications. Her poem “It is Natural” appears in The Driftless Reader, Curt Meine and Keefe Keeley, Eds. (U. of Wisconsin Press, 2017).  She regularly publishes haiku on Twitter (@lhbv). Since her retirement from the School District of La Crosse, WI, she has turned her creative focus to making art; printmaking in particular. “Vessels,” a series of embellished monotypes, was juried into La Crosse’s Pump House Regional Arts Center’s 2019 season.  During the pandemic shut down in 2020, her monoprint, “Gold Star,” won first place at Pablo Center’s Confluence of Art Annual, a virtual exhibition. Her work may be viewed at the River City Gallery, La Crosse, Wisconsin.  

She lives with her husband, Keith Valiquette, at the end of a coulee in rural Holmen, where they raise sheep, chickens, and vegetables. She is fortunate to have access to a beautiful printing press at the home of fellow Nine member, Marianne Stanke, in West Salem, Wisconsin.