Mike Lynch attended summer school at the Town Hall Art Colony in Grand Marais before enrolling at the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design).  His portrayals of the ordinary working class and industrial neighborhoods of the Midwest evoke the American Realist tradition of the 1920s and 1930s.  In this work, Lynch presents grain elevators, a recurrent theme in his work and one familiar to many from the Midwest.  Lynch is known for executing his paintings on the spot, his car often doubling as a studio.  He returned to this site repeatedly until he was confident of capturing the effects of light during specific moments and a continuity of perspective one is unable to produce by studying photographs.   Though many of his works are no larger than a book, he completed an 18-foot mural depicting the Mississippi River and St. Paul skyline for the Minnesota Revenue Department in 2002.  Lynch taught at Hamline University and the University of Minnesota and currently resides in St. Paul.