David Lynch: Separating Art from the Artist

The High School Awakening

When I was in high school, my two best friends and I watched Blue Velvet in the theater. We thought we were pretty cool—smoked French cigarettes, and believed we had a clear sense of how the world worked. We were all of 17, living in Toledo, and attending a small private school.

After the movie ended, we stood in the Southwyck Mall parking lot, smoking Gitanes, asking each other over and over what we had just watched.

The Lynch Effect

Blue Velvet is a noir detective story set in a small town. Innocence collides with violent, psychopathic criminals. It is not an “entertaining” movie. For my teenage mind, used to simple stories where good and bad are clearly defined, Blue Velvetwas something else entirely.

David Lynch blurred the line between reality and perception, never telling the viewer which was which—because it was all reality. The same theme runs through Twin Peaks, the television series he made in the late ’80s.

Fear, Vulnerability, and “Pretty Pictures”

I grew up in a stable, supportive, and loving family. And one of the things that always stops me in my artistic tracks is the fear of making something that might upset people—or worse, make them think I am the person in the work. That fear often pushes me toward making “pretty pictures” instead of more impactful work.

Exploring safe, surface-level ideas can feel mechanical compared to the more vulnerable things I really think about. And part of me holds back because I worry about what people will think.

Light and Dark in the Creative Process

Most of us lean negative in our perceptions. We catastrophize, imagine worst-case scenarios, and dwell on the 99 ways things can go wrong. That inner voice telling us “someone’s out to get us” is deeply human—it’s why our ancestors survived while others didn’t.

It’s easy to make work that’s all joy and sunshine. In the photo world, we call those “pretty pictures.” They don’t ask for much, and they don’t give much either, except maybe a pat on the head.

Dark work for the sake of darkness is easy too. Simple negativity doesn’t require much thought. That’s why politicians lean on the binary: “Me good, them bad.”

Resistance and Reframing

For me, reframing the negative feelings that come up in the creative process is the only way to get anything done. Most of my work requires a bit of discomfort to make. The resistance in my mind tells me: this isn’t important, no one will like it, what will my parents think?

Those voices don’t say the work is bad—they say it’s not worth doing. And they are persuasive.

That protective part of me serves a purpose, but reconciling it with the vulnerability required for creative work is the real challenge.

What the Audience Doesn’t See

The audience only sees the finished work—not the internal battles behind it. Everything on the surface can look simple, but making art, digging into nuanced ideas, and transforming them is uncomfortable. Making “pretty” work is easier. Think of a farmer’s plow skipping across the surface instead of breaking the soil. It moves faster, but it doesn’t till the ground.

Artists cover their vulnerability in all kinds of ways: sharp-edged personas, obsessive revision, a corporate façade, or eccentric quirks. But some of the most interesting artists I know are simple, generous, and grounded.

Lynch, Legacy, and Letting Go

David Lynch dedicated his life to telling uncomfortable, intimate stories that helped me identify deeper truths in my own. But the public perception of Lynch and who he really was—like with every artist—are not the same.

We tend to collapse the distinction between the artist and their work. If someone makes wild, angry, sexual, or disturbing art, we assume they must be all those things exclusively.

For me, making peace with how I see the world and how the world sees me is a struggle. I don’t want my ideas to cast me out of society. I like being around people, for the most part. Once the work leaves my head, the response is out of my control.

I’d love to feel more secure in my art-making, but I’m not there yet. At least not yet. There’s still time, God willing.