Overview
Lynne Tobin
Using string and thread saturated in black Sumi ink, Lynne Tobin creates drawings that evoke a sense of stillness and contemplative immediacy.

Lynne Tobin is a mixed-media artist based in the Hudson Valley, New York. Working primarily on paper, she employs thread, string, and ink to explore the inherent language of drawing. In her large-scale and intimate works, Tobin investigates line, materiality, and spatial tension, creating compositions that hover between the tactile and the ephemeral.

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For over a decade, Tobin’s abstract ink drawings have been featured in numerous group and juried exhibitions across New England and the East Coast. Her meticulous process — layering delicate threads over gestural ink marks — challenges traditional boundaries between drawing, textile arts, and installation. This interplay of media allows her to redefine how viewers engage with line, texture, and negative space.

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Most recently, Tobin presented her Line Studies series in a solo exhibition in Venice, Italy, during the 60th Venice Biennale. This show drew critical attention for its innovative fusion of thread-drawn pathways and fluid ink gestures, underscoring her commitment to pushing the dialogue surrounding contemporary drawing practices. Tobin’s work has been acquired by private and public collections and cited in regional art publications. She continues to develop new bodies of work through residencies, collaborative projects, and contributing to the vibrant community of artists in the Hudson Valley and beyond.

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Biography
Lynne Tobin
"Simplifying the drawing process to its basic elements allows a truer and more immediate expression to emerge. For me, this is when drawing becomes like poetry"

Artist's Statement

My recent work explores the language of drawing, using thread, string, and ink to create work on paper. Searching for a freer way of drawing a line, I began dipping flexible materials into ink, investigating their physical properties. The first drawings were done on a horizontal surface. I then began working vertically on the wall, observing the impact of gravity-how things hang in space, and the tension between something fixed and something falling. I became fascinated by the unrestrained marks and the random happenings created by materials saturated in ink.

I am inspired by the materials, rhythms, and patterns experienced in daily life, and in crafts traditionally associated with women, such as stitching, mending, and weaving. In my Line Studies drawings, the repetitive patterns are reminiscent of textiles-like threads on a loom woven together on paper.

For me, working with these simple materials on paper is a meditation. The tactile surfaces and repeating linear references invite the viewer into an internal space and quiet realm. There is something about simplifying the drawing process to its basic elements which allows a truer and more immediate expression to emerge. For me this is when drawing becomes like poetry. 

Lynne Tobin

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Virtual exhibition
Lynne Tobin
This digital catalogue of recent work by Lynne Tobin is available in hard copy by contacting jen@woodstockguild.org.Catalogue design by Susanna Ronner Graphic Design.