Fred Lynch graduated from RISD in 1986 and has been creating illustrations for a broad range of national clients ever since. He works in publishing, advertising and corporate communications and has won recognition from The Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, Communication Arts magazine, Print magazine, American Artists magazine and The Norman Rockwell Museum. He has been a member of RISD’s Illustration faculty since 1989 and began teaching full-time in 2015. He also taught for many years at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA and chaired his department for more than a decade.

Lynch has won the John R. Frasier Award for Teaching Excellence at RISD and the Carlos Dorrian Award for Teaching Excellence at Montserrat. He has mentored many young faculty members at both institutions. His fine art paintings are exhibited in national and regional juried exhibitions. He lives outside of Boston with his wife, Karen, and two sons, Henry and Owen.

Academic research/areas of interest

Fred Lynch is known at RISD for teaching the Illustration department’s required concept classes, as well as Journalistic Illustration and Visual Essay. Each summer he teaches in Viterbo, Italy as part of Montserrat College of Art’s Italy Program. There, and at home, he an artist of journalistic illustration, creating site-specific illustrative works on-site and documenting the specifics of time, place and eyewitness narrative. He was selected as a member of the group Urban Sketchers, a worldwide coalition of 100 artists who share their work online and in exhibitions. His on-site works can be found in many books published in the US and abroad.

Lynch’s research and practice in visual journalism has led him to research institutions like The Dowd Modern Graphic History Library at Washington University and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University, as well as the British Museum and the Imperial War Museum in London. He has lectured and taught workshops on the subject in Manchester, England; Paraty, Brazil; and Barcelona, Spain.

Fall 2018 Courses

• ILLUS-3904-01 Journalistic Illustration
• ILLUS-3012-01 Style & Substance
• ILLUS-2000-05 Visual Thinking