The Liminal Space Between Presence and Remembering
By Vanessa Harper
When I first laid eyes on Caitlin Flynn’s body of work, I felt transported in time. Some paintings took me to the rustic beaches of old Florida or Cape Cod in decades past, while others open like a doorway to what comes next. Her work suspends you between memory and imagination and captures fragments of a shared nostalgia with scenes that feel like they belong equally to someone else’s story and to your own.
Caitlin’s art is reminiscent of influential 20th-century artists like Wolf Kahn, Joan Mitchell, and Mark Rothko, each known for distinct styles within the broader abstract tradition. As a tribute to them, and to the Bay Area Figurative movement, her work lives at the intersection of impressionism’s light and expressionism’s emotion, synthesizing color-field expanses, gestural abstraction, and beautifully chunky brushstrokes. What’s unique is how she tethers these influences to the passage of time, a strong sense of place, and an undercurrent of hope. She creates pieces that feel both deeply personal and universally familiar and her purpose is equally rooted in homage to her predecessors and a commitment to her own way of processing the world
I met with Caitlin on a balmy August afternoon at her home in Neptune Beach where her cozy and colorful studio is nestled just off the family kitchen. She welcomed me with homemade banana bread, herbal tea, and the low hum of jazz. Her studio was exuberant with hues on canvas—both commissions and personal works in progress —an alchemy that defines her world.
As we walked through her home and studio, I was able to get a real sense of the breadth of her work. Her practice spans abstraction, landscape, and figurative—three very unique styles of painting. Where academia once urged her to choose one direction, Caitlin has always resisted the notion that an artist must be singular. Instead, she embraces multiplicity, allowing each mode of expression to speak with its own voice. Her landscapes echo her New England roots, the figurative pieces are often steeped in family history, and her abstract canvases serve as pure emotional release. Yet there is a through line of experiential cohesion. Each piece beckons you to step into the image and become deeply immersed in the mood.
