David Lynch has inspired more articles on this site than almost any other filmmaker. His uncompromising vision and twisted cinematic tales have had us breaking down his aesthetic choices, eagerly anticipating the return of Twin Peaks, and, of course, obsessively theorizing aboutMullholland Drive. But it wasn't until last year's documentary David Lynch: The Art Life that we really started to get to know Lynch as a person, and understand where those dark fantasies emerged from.
In the doc, we also learned that Lynch started out as a visual artist and it was a hallucination that one of his own paintings was moving and making sound that nudged him toward filmmaking. We see him painting in the film, a passion which he has kept up to this day, and hear his, well, Lynchian takes on the matter: I’d like to bite my paintings, but I can’t because there’s lead in the paint. I don’t feel I’ve really gotten in there yet. But as much of an "artiste" as he is, Lynch has no aversion to commerce. Java Distribution sells his signature coffee, he collaborated with Habitat on a line of Twin Peaks-inspired skateboarding merch, and now you can own one of his paintings. Or several of them. At least in t-shirt form.
An offer from the Studio: David Lynch store on Amazon
*Not guaranteed with purchase.
Featured image from a painting by David Lynch.
