Lynn Tomlinson is internationally acclaimed for her films made through a unique clay on glass animation method. She smears, smudges, and alters colorful modeling clay frame-by-frame like a moving painting, a handcrafted approach that brings her stories of impermanence, memory, and the natural world to life through shifting perspectives and fluid transformations. Collaborating closely with musicians, Tomlinson treats music as a storytelling partner to create an immersive, lyrical experience that deepens her films' themes and sense of movement.
Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou. The Elephant’s Song was an official selection at Annecy International Animation Festival in 2019 and is featured on Short of the Week, and her music video for Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane’s Ten Degrees of Strange won Best Commissioned Film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 2021. Her films have screened in prestigious film festivals around the world, and locally at Maryland Film Festival and Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival. She has just completed a new animated documentary short, A Black Rail’s Tale, narrated by MacArthur fellow J. Drew Lanham. Tomlinson’s expanded animation practice includes fulldome films that have shown in planetariums and immersive domes worldwide.
The recipient of many awards for her individual films and body of work, Tomlinson has been a three-time Baker Artist Awards finalist and the recipient of the 2022 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize for Film; a Saul Zaentz Innovation Fellow; and a two-time Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Award-winner. She has held prestigious artist residencies in the United States and Europe and presented master classes and invited lectures internationally. Tomlinson is Professor of Film, Audio and Media Arts at Towson University, and works at her studio in Woodberry, Baltimore.
