Outside of filmmaking, he worked as an artist and musician. Indeed, initially Lynch aspired to work as a painter, his ambition serving as the subject of the well-received 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life. Today, his Francis Bacon-inspired paintings sit within the private collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and his alma mater, Philadelphia’s Academy of Fine Arts, where he exhibited in 2014. While his paintings were admired, they never reached the level of acclaim of his filmmaking, with The New York Times bluntly arguing, “Is Mr. Lynch as compelling a fine artist as he has been a filmmaker? The short answer is no.”
Called a “modern-day icon and polymath” by NME, Lynch also released two studio solo albums, along with three collaborative records and six soundtrack albums. He regularly collaborated with brands on advertisements, most notably with Calvin Klein, for whom he produced four films inspired by literary quotes in promotion of their scent Obsession. Eclectic in his choice of commercial partners, he worked with fashion clients like Dior, Saint Laurent, and Giorgio Armani, while also producing films for Clear Blue pregnancy tests, Alka-Seltzer, and New York’s Department of Sanitation. A keen furniture designer, Lynch presented a collection at the Milan Furniture Fair in 1997 and brought his eye to the nightclub industry when he created Silencio in Paris in 2011.
In later life, he became a vocal advocate of transcendental meditation. Beginning his personal practice in 1973, he set up the David Lynch Foundation in 2005, with the ambition of teaching children about meditation. “The things in life that used to almost kill you, stress you, depress you, make you sad, make you afraid—they have less and less power,” he told The New York Times of his practice in 2013. “It’s like you’re building up a flak jacket of protection. You’re starting to glow with this from within.” Receiving generous publicity thanks to the support of celebrity friends like Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Clint Eastwood, and Jerry Seinfeld, the foundation later supported at-risk populations like the homeless and military veterans. In 2006 he released a book on the topic, part autobiography and part self-help tome, called Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.
