RYAN ELIZABETH LYNCH

bio.

Ryan Lynch (she/her) is an award-winning filmmaker, art director, and painter from the Bay Area. After working in the Story, Art, & Development departments of Pixar for over a decade on Academy Award-winning films such as Brave, Ratatouille, Toy Story, she decided to explore her own authentic stories that champion diverse, complex women with a bold aesthetic. She created SanFranLand, a live-action comedic web series, and directed and wrote UTurn VR, a pilot that tackles gender issues in the tech industry. Both garnered numerous awards, played in international festivals, such as Cannes, Mill Valley, San Francisco Int’l, and UN Women Global Voices, and are distributed on Amazon, Oculus Go, and Canal+. Her feature-length screenplay, Noor, is a historical, true story thriller based on a children’s book author turned spy during WWII who also has Mehwish Hayat (Ms. Marvel) attached in the lead role. It’s being packaged by Bohemia Group Originals and Propagate Content. Ryan holds a BFA in Fine Art and an MFA in Film Directing from the Academy of Art University.

Growing up on a horse farm in rural Georgia, I had limited avenues for seeing the world, but somehow even in the boonies, there was a video store at the end of my dirt road. I rode my horse to that video store whenever I found change tucked into the couch. Many films were on repeat, like Princess Bride, ET, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars, so my obsession with creating alt worlds within art, film, & story started from an early age.

Check out my PAINTINGS here: www.ryanlynch.art

what brings me JOY:

power of story and the imagination
immersive experiences
art direction
abstract painting
collaboration
living spaces
color theory
live music
curiosity

botany
costuming
the beauty within
my smart and sassy daughters
building stuff with electric tools (and sometimes pillows!)
seeing colorful paint under my fingernails

world travel
disco, my fur-ball pomsky
sacred geometry
photography
neon

festivals/screenings/press:

Academy Awards
The Golden Globes
Annie Awards
Cannes Film Festival
Cannes XR Arcade
San Francisco Int’l Film Festival
Mill Valley Film Festival
Google i/o
San Francisco Chronicle
SF Bay Guardian
Raindance Film Festival
UN Women Global Voices VR Festival
Oculus Connect 4 Conference
Samsung Developer Conference
FIVARS
360 Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival
Miami Web Festival
Cleveland International Film Festival
Nantucket International Film Festival
SAT IX Immersive Symposium
Wonder Women Tech Conference
Burning Man
KQED

a little bit more about me:

Storytelling and art are like oxygen and water, necessities that nourish my curiosity and fuel my investigations into the human spirit. I'm fascinated with immersive worlds and finding new ways to tell stories and how to express them visually and/or experientially. My films, stories, and art often use magical realism as a vehicle for subconscious thought, as there is something so extraordinary about the human experience on all levels of consciousness. There is so much magic in the world if you know where to look.

I spent a wonderful decade working in Pixar's Story and Creative Development departments on Academy Award-winning films such as Brave, Ratatouille, Toy Story, and Cars shorts, a fantastic visual storytelling education with deep mentorship in creative producing, empathic artist management, and cross-departmental collaboration.

As a painter, I combine my passion for storytelling with my art. I aim to create cinematic and emotional abstract art that explores unseen worlds of the human experience: our emotional landscape, the subconscious, and everyday magic.

Growing up on a horse farm in rural Georgia, I had limited avenues for seeing the world, but somehow, even in the boonies, there was a video store at the end of my dirt road. I rode my horse to that video store whenever I found change tucked into the couch. Many films were on repeat, like Princess Bride, ET, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars, so my obsession with creating alt worlds within art, film, & story started from an early age.