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“Fade to Black,” New York City, print
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“Southern Most House — Key West,” giclee, 44 inches high by 52 inches wide by 4 inches deep
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“Key Lime — Key West” original gouache and acrylic, framed, 38 inches high by 45 inches wide
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“My View from Florence,” original gouache and acrylic, 46 inches high by 54 inches wide by 4 inches deep
Shortly after moving to Richmond in 1971, Lynn Blakemore took a photo of Main Street Station. Even as a child, she had noticed the buildings in the cities where she lived and traveled. The historic Renaissance Revival station caught her eye.
Nine years later, that photo became the basis of Blakemore’s first large-scale architectural painting, a style for which she soon became known.
In the decades since, Blakemore has traveled to Miami and Key West, New York City and Cape May, Paris and Florence. At every destination, she photographs the buildings, streets and canals as inspiration for her intricate and colorful paintings.
Her approach is time intensive. She projects her photos, enlarging them to 30 by 40 inches, to make a comprehensive drawing capturing minute detail. She then outlines the buildings in ink using a T-square and ruler to ensure that each line is straight. Finally, she applies a watercolor base layer to set the colors and tones, followed by a gouache overpainting — a solid color medium often used in architectural renderings. Each painting takes three to four months to complete.
Blakemore says she’s always been drawn to architecture. A professor in art school even threatened her with a failing grade when she continuously eschewed her still-life assignments to paint portraits of buildings.
“It’s incredible to think about how we design spaces, and then we live and work in them,” she says.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Blakemore had a steady showing at the bygone Suitable for Framing in Richmond and a dedicated following of collectors who were quick to buy out her vibrant paintings.
“I always tried to present a total image of the city I was depicting,” she says. “If people hadn’t been there, they would get some sense of what it was like.”
Blakemore ended her annual showing at Suitable for Framing when she moved to Florida in the mid-2000s. Now, she’s back for her first exhibition in Richmond in 15 years. “Edifice Rex: Architectural Impressions by Lynn Blakemore” is on view until May in the lobby of Riverside on the James at 1001 and 1101 Haxall Point. The exhibition features work spanning decades and reflecting a variety of cities and architectural styles, from the gingerbread trim of a Key West cottage to the polychrome marble panels of Florence’s il Duomo.
“I look for something quirky, something extremely ornate,” she says, “or when the light and shade patterns and architectural details make a painting, just as they are.”
