Best described as “figurative” or “representational” – and currently informed by the sandy, golden hues of California’s terrain as seen through the windows of her cockpit at 6,000 feet - artist/private pilot, Audrey Lund’s work is expressed in her signature medium, acrylic paints.
“It is a fast-paced technique that allows my brush to keep pace with the images that race into my mind.
Her paintings often depict people without faces or expression. “It is all about the body language and the pose, the attitude and self-expression” the artist reveals. “They are all ‘doing something’ and it is up to the viewer to bring their curiosity to the view and, thereby, derive their own interpretation.”
Last year’s featured artist as Los Altos Rotary Art in the Park, Audrey’s latest and most prolific collection, Reflexion, experiments with a palette of colors different from the bold, big ones that defined previous “more experimental” work. She ascribes the transition to the more “relaxed and calm” articulation as representative of an evolving personal and artistic sensibility. She is able to convey, she feels, the big emotions utilizing a variety of hues and, recently, by adding squares, cubes and spheres.
“Colors are a big part of my work. I want to feel big emotions and reflect them in my paintings. Pure colors. Lights and charismatic subjects are always attractive to me. People became a large part of my focus, eventually, becoming my main topic.”
When she begins a piece, the “entire emotion of it,” the artist explains, comes together for her at once and it is this, the initial explosion of feeling, that she is impelled to capture, right at that juncture, not allowing any time to intervene before she “gives birth” to it. This keeps her up at times around the clock – until she has poured the expression onto the canvas true to the specific initial emotion that was engendered. Subsequent work on the painting after the initial rendering involves extraordinary and comprehensive texture and layering and touching up.
Born and raised in Lyon, France, Lund completed art studies at the prestigious Lycée Debordes, before traveling extensively for her career in communications. Shortly after moving to the Bay Area 22 years ago, Lund was selected by the agency director of the international San Francisco public relations agency for which she worked to manage the entire Open Studios’ account. Open Studios is a major San Francisco annual event that showcases the area’s leading artists.
During the last nine years, Lund reports that she felt an “inexorable urge” to paint, a powerful prompting that had to find expression – and has. Prolific, in fact, Audrey ultimately opened her studio in downtown Los Altos in 2015 and became a member of Women Entrepreneurs of Los Altos.
The Bay Area has reciprocated Audrey Lund’s total engagement with it and has celebrated her work.
