Painter Alan Lynch was born in San Francisco, California, in 1926. As a child, his family moved to Santa Monica and then Los Angeles for his father's job as an executive for the Alcoa Corporation. The sudden death of his brother from heart disease when Alan was only twelve led the young man to immerse himself in various private studies, including the study of reptiles through written correspondence with the Museum of Natural History, martial arts, and Japanese culture. The latter would later inspire much of his visual art and spiritual pursuits. 

After serving as a peacetime officer with the U.S. Navy in post-war Japan, he returned to San Francisco. There, he met and became close friends with the artist Fred Martin and the two studied Japanese woodcuts and raku ceramics. In the 1950s he enrolled in Mexico City College where he received his M.F.A., and then on to the University of California, Los Angeles on the G.I. Bill, earning an M.A. in art history. While in Los Angeles he furthered his studies of Japanese arts, including calligraphy and ceramics associated with the Zen Buddhist philosophy, zenga. This interest became a catalyst for his pursuit of painting.

He began exhibiting throughout Southern California beginning in the late 1950s, including at the Pasadena Art Museum and the Ferus Gallery. Around 1960 he moved to New York, where he was invited to exhibit at the Ward Eggleston Gallery. He was given his first solo show in England at the McRoberts & Tunnard Gallery in London, followed by a group show at the American Embassy. A three month traveling grant, awarded by the American Office of Cultural Exchange, afforded him the ability to travel and lecture throughout Europe. These events are credited with introducing West Coast fine art aesthetic to the United Kingdom; conversely, Lynch was exposed first-hand to Spanish Surrealism, which would also become an inspiration throughout his career. 

In 1965 the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts) took on Lynch as an Associate Professor; simultaneously, he became a lecturer at UC Berkeley and was a juror for the National Print Exhibition at SFMOMA along with Wayne Thiebaud and Moses Lasky. Throughout the rest of the decade he exhibited throughout California and in New York and Switzerland. In 1967 he moved to New York, and then Paris two years later. His focus now was on Soto Zen Buddhism, studying under Taisen Deshimaru. He continued to paint in watercolor off and on, and after his return to the U.S. in the mid 1970s he continued to return to France for Deshimaru's retreats. 

Lynch met and became partners with the poet Rosemary Manna in 1977, and together they bought a house in Ashville, North Carolina. They divided  their time between this house and New York and Paris, and finally returned to San Francisco by the mid 1980s, now permanently. He would remain there until his death in 1994.

Selected exhibitions:
1962: McRoberts & Tunnard Gallery, London, England (solo); American Embassy, London
1964: American Painting Exhibition, U.S. State Department and the Whitney Museum (exhibition director and participant); Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA; Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Arts of San Francisco, Parts I and II, San Francisco Museum of Art, CA (now SFMOMA); Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1965: Dilexi Gallery; Selections from the Work of California Artists, Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio, TX
1966: Dilexi Gallery at the Musee Cantonal des Seaux Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland; West Coast Painters, Museum of Modern Art, NY; California '66: Painters and Sculptors, Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento, CA
1967: Dilexi Gallery
1969: Contemporary American Painting, Annual Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY
1984: The Dilexi Years, Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA
2019: Disparate Ontologies, retrospective of Dilexi Gallery artists (posthumous), The Landing, Los Angeles, CA
2023: The Bay and Beyond: California Paintings and Sculpture (posthumous), Modern Art West, Sonoma, CA

Awards:
Fulbright Travel Scholarship, 1964

Sources for this biography include the write up of Alan Lynch by curator Laura Whitcomb for the exhibition "Dilexi Gallery: Disparate Ontologies", The Landing Gallery, 2019.