LYNDON POLAN
Lyndon Polan
Spring 2026
Your graphite work feels deeply atmospheric, almost narrative. Do stories influence the way you approach drawing?
My practice explores the connections between visual narrative, memory, and the subconscious. In my work, I am interested in creating interactions between individual pieces so that they form loose, open-ended narratives. Rather than illustrating a fixed story, I try to create images that suggest fragments of a larger world, allowing viewers to assemble their own interpretations.
What draws you to graphite as a medium?
Drawing with graphite pencils was my first introduction to making art. I began drawing before I could even walk. Today, my primary artistic practice is oil painting, where I work on canvas with bright and vivid colors. However, in the last few years I’ve found myself drawn back to drawing as a medium.
Lately I’ve been taking time to be more introspective in my work. I believe it’s important to look back at earlier work to better understand where you are now and where you want to go. My process is often instinctive, and revisiting older pieces with fresh eyes and new experiences helps me better understand both my past state of mind and my current one.
Working in grayscale with graphite allows me to reconnect with those early artistic roots. At the same time, it carries a sense of nostalgia for me, similar to an old photograph, a television image, or even the feeling of a distant memory.
Your work often leaves space for ambiguity. How important is uncertainty or silence in an image?
Personally, I feel that art is strongest when the viewer can appropriate their own meaning from the work. When that happens, the work becomes theirs, and they can form a personal attachment to it. Ambiguity is a powerful tool in facilitating that process. If an image doesn’t offer a definitive answer, it leaves space for the viewer to construct their own.
Some of the stories that have been most formative for me, whether in books, film, or television, are ones I have almost subconsciously chosen not to finish. By never reaching their endpoint, they remain uncertain and somehow continue to live within me. In that way they become eternalized, allowing me to continually reshape their meaning over time.
In a similar way, when you are placed face to face with silence in an image, what remains are your own thoughts. That is where your work as the viewer truly begins.
What role do atmosphere and darkness play in your work?
Atmosphere and darkness play an important role in my work because they help create a space that feels closer to memory or dreaming than to direct observation. I’m interested in images that feel slightly removed from reality, where forms emerge gradually rather than being fully revealed.
Darkness allows parts of the image to remain uncertain, and that uncertainty invites the viewer to slow down and search within the image. In that sense, darkness is not only about mood, but also about creating space for interpretation. What is hidden can often be just as important as what is shown.
I’m drawn to the way darkness can evoke the feeling of a distant memory, something partially remembered rather than clearly seen. That atmosphere helps the image exist in a space between clarity and ambiguity, which is where I feel the viewer’s imagination can become most active.
final thought
It was very enjoyable to create artwork in response to these stories. While working on the illustrations, I tried to translate the feelings and imagery that emerged as I read them into visual form. I hope the talented group of authors feel that I’ve done their work justice.