Donna Lynn Friedson

Donna Lynn Friedson grew up in Long Island, New York and is an Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts and Art History at a SUNY in the New York City area. She has her AAS degree in Design from Rochester Institute of Technology, BFA in Fine Arts from Maryland Institute of Arts, and a Masters in Art History from Brooklyn College. Presently she has her studio and resides in both TRIBECA, downtown Manhattan as well as her country house in the Catskill Mountains.

She began her work as an artist using traditional materials including oils, acrylics, pastels, pencil, charcoal and later on, clay. In the last 15 years she has made the transition to silk painting believing it compliments her expressionistic style. She feels silk painting needs to be recognized as a fine art form, and sees herself as extracting the excitement of canvas painting and transplanting in into a new terrain. Canvas for her is unable to parallel the fresh combination of immediacy, luminosity, sensuality and elegance inherent in silk fabric. Her work is modern and alluring based on its imaginative patterns, color schemes and vigorously asserted brushstrokes and intense layering of forms, Donna describes her work, which is influenced by nature as "multi-layered, esoteric abstract designs, expressive, intuitive and liberating."

She has worked with analine dyes (powders mixed with vinegar and water), and now silk paint, (Marabu and Dynaflow) Donna loves accidents and lets the results of one step tell her what the next step should be. This allows for the contrast of freedom and control in her process, finding exhilaration and magic in the unpredictability that results from the many methods of physical resists she uses, such as bobby pins, paper clips, clothes pins, rubber bands, etc.