Involved in fine art and fine craft for the past 25 years, Lyn Asselta's extensive background has included titles such as elementary school art teacher, draftsman, calligrapher, workshop instructor, and creator of award-winning fine-art gourd vessels. However, at one point, she opened an old box of Grumbacher pastels and never looked back. An ever-changing life prompted her to sit down and evaluate what really inspired her creativity and made her wonder what she would still like to say to the world. While pondering this question, she discovered that the majority of her memories revolved around places and how she had felt in those places. Images of fields of Queen Anne's Lace and old farmhouses on hills, waves crashing against rock and fog obscuring shorelines, the sun setting over golden marshes and silhouetting ancient oaks, mist on the distant hills in the morning...these were the images that lived in her memory and that carried a sense of timelessness and endless possibilities. Having had the good fortune to live in places that offered up amazing scenery, from the salt marshes and waterways of Florida, to the Smoky Mountains of the Carolinas, to the rock-bound coast of Maine, Lyn realized that her life's one common thread was her fascination with the landscape. Throughout her life, she has found herself drawn to places that have a rugged, solitary strength, places where she feels able to lose herself in the nature that surrounds her. Pastel, as a medium, seems to be a perfect metaphor for her relationship to these landscapes... vibrant, expressive, exuberant and tactile; pastel allows Lyn to hold a piece of color in her hand and to capture the essence of places that still possess a wild, untouched sense of beauty.
Lyn is a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America (PSA) and a Master's Circle recipient of the International Association of Pastel Societies. She is the founder and President of the First Coast Pastel Society (FL), and a member of the Southeastern Pastel Society, the North Florida Pastel Society, Women Painters of the Southeast and Plein Air Florida. In 2009, Lyn had the honor of being an Artist in Residence for the National Park Service at Acadia National Park in Maine.
Her home and studio are in the nation's oldest city, St. Augustine, Florida. Paintings may be seen at the Aviles Gallery in St. Augustine, Fl, the Melrose Bay Art Gallery in Melrose, FL, First Street Gallery, in Neptune Beach, FL and Artemis Gallery in Apalachicola, FL.
