10 Years In, 0 Regrets

I’m gonna let you know right now, this letter is going on a journey. It’ll be long, so skip down to the other news bits if you’d rather. However, if you’d like to join me as I reminisce about how I ended up here and the first decade of Lyn Hiner Studios, grab some coffee or tea and get comfy. I’m feeling nostalgic and grateful!

Here we go!

I was watching a documentary on Nolan Ryan last month. Mind you, I’m not a fan of baseball, but I know his name and reputation, so I decided to watch it. Nolan Ryan is a record-breaking player. Do you know how he got there? He focused on his skills, and he did it without sacrificing himself or the people he held most precious.

 I’m a fan of hardworking, devoted humans who get it done, regardless of if/when the spotlight is on them and especially when they do it without taking others down literally or metaphorically in the process. Nolan Ryan is that kind of human. Fiercely competitive, loves his family, doesn’t pitch a fit when he doesn’t win the Cy Young award ever. Here’s a guy who lived his life throwing wildly for the first few years of his career before he landed on a team that gave him a pitching coach who helped him harness his powerful arm. Amazing!

I was fascinated with his 27-year career…in a professional sport. Nearly 30 years as a baseball icon while not just maintaining a family but staying devoted to being close to them. He left the sport in his forties, only because of an injury, while still loving the game having amassed a boatload of “the most (fill in the blank)” awards then I think any other sports figure! By the way, many of those awards were not about being the best, but in fact some were for being the worst! Again, such a real human doing his best and being devoted to his craft and family. It wasn’t spelled out for him, he figured it out along the way.

I’m not going to pretend that I’m “The Best” artist out there. Far from it! I stand in awe of so many contemporary artists, both in the automotive space and in fine art as a whole. I am grateful to know I have a unique voice in creating and not everyone can say that. I know my work is distinctive, and that I know is God-given.

Ten years ago, my professional art career began while I was in my forties…I’m like the reverse of the Nolan story. lol. However, the story began long before this. If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you have likely heard the story of the long and windy path my life has taken. Sure, I was a young creative. Yes, I even went to art school. But these are merely blips on the radar, a forecast to this life I have led. There was more than 20 years between leaving Pratt Institute and the launch of my first painting series.

Filled most importantly with my beloved husband and adult kids, the past 30+ years (we just celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary), have been an incredible adventure!! When Rob and I met during my days at PRI, I had no idea of the twists and turns our lives would take…but God did and I’m immensely grateful that we have shared the highs and lows, amazing adventures and mundane days together.

Through the years, I briefly worked at an architectural & design firm, was a trade show manager at Performance Racing Industry, and then stayed at home to raise our kids. Periodically, my dad would ask when I would start creating again. “Dad! My life is so full right now. If that’s what God wants me to do, it’ll come. But not right now. I’m enjoying the life we are creating now,” I’d tell him. Even when we built out a studio with some unused storage space in our home, I didn’t really create my own artwork there…instead I taught, and it was a blessing to give kids a place to exercise their creative minds!

It wasn’t until May 2012 that the journey back to creating began. I found myself recovering from 2^nd & 3^rd degree burns I experienced in a freak incident. That recovery would last over a year, and even after the final surgery, the scars that were both physical and internal, would take much longer to recover from. But that’s when God called me back to creating. It wasn’t something I would say I was seeking out…but once I felt the call, I found myself thinking on it, praying about it, talking to friends and family about this crazy direction I discovered I was now aching to do. I started small and did little things. Then a friend suggested I go bigger, because none of my little art would hang on her big walls. So, I went bigger!

A year into my exploratory journey, I joined my friend, Rene, at an abstract art class at a local church to play in an area of art I didn’t particularly appreciate. Through that four week process I played with ALL sorts of methodologies, techniques and theories. Through that level of play and discovery, I found my voice and incorporated layers and layers of delicious paint applied with palette knives, adding what has now become a signature component of liquifying some details for what I affectionately call my drippy goodness all while sharing the story of my painful journey going through the physical and emotional scars from being burned…literally and metaphorically. These stories came in the form of abstracted florals. Then a few years later, I started the Petrol series.

I equate the journey of this long season of my life to Nolan’s wild pitching days until his pitching coach got involved. Once harnessed, I was laser-focused, completed an unbelievable amount of painting through 2015-2016. In July of 2015, in an effort to make a monument to what God had called me to ( I was also preparing to do my very first art show locally), I went and got a business license and a business account. Brazenly, I dba’d the name Lyn Hiner Studios because that’s what I believed God was gonna do…grow this adventure into something BIG. And sure enough, that is what He’s been doing.

Meanwhile, life was still rolling along. The kids were nearing their respective graduations from high school. Rob retired from his many years as the head of creative and marketing at the place we met all those years ago. Amazingly, and to be clear: not suddenly, I found a moderate level of success. Bigger opportunities came and private collectors began discovering my work.

First there were notable fine art shows, then when the car series began in 2017, invitations to incredible places I knew…and some I only became aware of later. First there was the invitation by SEMA, then a year later The Amelia and Pebble Beach Concours! A crazy, once-in-a-lifetime exhibit with five powerhouse artists and 200 notable car builders and manufacturers in Saudi Arabia! By this time, Rob was now working with me full time (so much for his retirement! Lol). We were making plans to take our exhibits over to Europe: Goodwood Revival in the UK and Retromobile in Paris were in our sights! It was an exciting time, but also one of tremendous adjustments. God was generously giving me/us a way to provide for our family through this art journey. Truly, it was beyond my wildest imagination!

Then covid hit and with it a very unexpected pause for nearly a year. That was a hard year. Personally, there were significant losses for our family. Coming into 2021 with so much uncertainty felt wildly uncomfortable. So I leaned in and said yes to everything. I did that again in 2022 and by 2023, opportunities like our team in Japan materializing and trips to Goodwood and Concours of Elegance in the UK started shaping a direction we had only dreamed a few years earlier. That same year, the prayer we had for a larger creative space away from our home studio & office came to fruition!!

I know this all sounds like a humble brag, but it isn’t meant to. I have genuinely stopped frequently as of late to reflect on where this art adventure began and where I find myself now and all I can say with tear-filled eyes is WOW! God has given us the incredible gift of friends, family, collectors, and supporters who, whether they intended to or not, have made this decade-long journey a profound blessing!

I GET to do this. That’s not lost on me. This God-given passion for creating art is something that was deep seeded from my youth and grew through adverse circumstances into this incredible beast I wield with my family!

Sometimes it’s ridiculously hard…if people really knew how many hours I put into a given day/week/year I think they’d be shocked (Hint: the past two weeks have been 12-hour days…with no significant breaks in our schedule since December). I’m a little sleep deprived, but I LOVE IT!! Often, I wonder if I’m going in the direction God would have for me…but I am here, doing some crazy cool paintings for some amazing people and going to incredible places…with the people I love most in this world and experiencing things I never imagined! That’s a little like Nolan Ryan, right?

In a recent interview, I was asked how it feels being 10 years in, sitting in this studio space we’ve created. There’s a verse in the Bible that says “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.”  - and so again, with tears as well as a fat lump in my throat, I say who am I that God would give me such a profound gift? This gift!? Creating artwork that people don’t always get, but for those who do, it speaks to their hearts and they invest their hard-earned money on what I create. THAT is an overwhelming concept. One I feel the burden of responsibility and audacious joy that defies comprehension!

I’m not a normal creative. “Free-spirited and disorganized” which may describe a lot of artists doesn’t describe me. Although I laugh easily and heartily, I would probably say I’m a fairly intense human being. I come by the easy laughter from my mom and the intensity from my dad. I consider that a good blend. I think that’s what I feel when I’m creating works of art: wild joy and a focused direction. Do you see that when you experience my art? I’m curious what you see/feel.

Okay, now I’m wishing I had you across from me and we could have this conversation together!

Thank you, friends. Thank you for sojourning with me on this road of remembrance of grace, mercy, faith, fun, good times and hard times, joy and pain. It’s all on my canvases, whether you read these posts or not, I imagine you experience it in some way in the paintings I create.

As I think back to the end of the Nolan Ryan documentary, the once wire-thin baseball player was walking alongside a lake with his bride of more than 50 years, his family still close by, laughing and telling stories…he doesn’t appear to be longing for ‘the good ole days’ but very present on the here and now.

I feel I’m mid-career and still honing my skills and visions. Ideas are percolating in my mind and some bigger and vastly different paintings are somewhere on the horizon. I still have some things left to do…I am so blessed I am doing them with my family close by, patient clients willing to wait for their project to be completed, dragons to slay and adventures to be had. As in previous works, it is these life experiences that become part of the paintings I am creating now. The sights, sounds, colors and sensations all influence what comes next!

Thank you for being part of our first ten years; we can’t wait to see what the next chapter holds together.

Thank you, friends!

For those attending Car Week, I hope to see you there!!!

Cheers,

--Lyn