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Arts & Entertainment

Now he's painting with sound: Artist Mike Lynch Courts a New Muse

Lynch's striking images of unpopulated urban and small-town scenes—often at night—have made him one of Minnesota's most honored artists. He's won prestigious fellowships and awards from organizations including the Bush and McKnight founda

There are no stage lights on Monday night at Merlin's Rest on Lake Street, so the guy with the gray fedora partially covering his eyes is shrouded in shadows. It's a noir-ish scene that fits the bluesy sound coming from his harmonica. It's also the kind of night-time scene Mike Lynch might like to paint—if he wasn't the one playing the harp.

One of Minnesota's most highly regarded visual artists is trying his hand at a new art form. At the age of 72, Southwest Minneapolis painter Mike Lynch, has—figuratively speaking—traded his brushes for harmonicas and keyboards.

For roughly 10 years, Lynch's hobby has been playing harmonica and keyboards with Mercs, a local bar band that performs monthly at Merlin's Rest on Lake Street. (They were originally called “The Mercs”, but then discovered another band had copyrighted the name.)

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With Mercs, Lynch mainly plays harp, a long-time hobby. He's taken up keyboard more recently, at a rudimentary level. “I play it like a typewriter; it's a good way to figure out tunes.” On a recent Monday night, Lynch played some chugging rhythm-harp, and adding bluesy fills to complement the combo's guitars, bass, fiddle and drums. The group's repertoire ranges from older blues, country and gospel tunes, to Beatles tunes and a few originals. .

“I don't have the technique in music that I have in painting; I haven't worked at it that hard,” Lynch notes. But I can do music part-time and maybe not be too serious about it.” After spending years engaged in the relatively solitary activity of painting, he also enjoys the social side of music. “You can meet people you wouldn't otherwise meet in 1,000 years, some really interesting characters.”

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For about 20 years, beginning in the late '50s, Lynch made his living working part-time as a picture-framer at several local galleries. In the late '70s, he began concentrating full-time on painting until a couple of years ago when he took a break from the canvas. “Painting was taking up so much time I didn't have time to spend with ,my family. I couldn't seem to do it part-time.” (Lynch and his wife, Ann, have two daughters, one son, one stepson and one grandchild).

The act of painting isn't the time consuming part. But “messing around making materials—mixing all of the colors ahead of time and putting them in tubes, takes a lot of time.”

Lynch's striking images of unpopulated urban and small-town scenes—often at night—have made him one of Minnesota's most honored artists. He's won prestigious fellowships and awards from organizations including the Bush and McKnight foundations.

Sally Johnson, director at Groveland Gallery, which has represented Lynch since 1975, calls him “one of the most talented artists the state has produced. He's created and perfected a source of imagery that has been appealing to a lot of people, painting places that most of us drive by and don't even notice—the lone building in the train yard, the small town bar with its Grain Belt sign.

“He's really well-collected in the Twin Cities; all of the major museums—the Minnesota Historical Society, the Walker, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts—own his paintings, as well as lots of private and corporate collections. He's received tremendous reviews. But, as an artist, he's quite modest, and he's never tooted his own horn.”

Although, Lynch isn't completely retired as a visual artist. He's working on a logo for the band.

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