David Lynch once said that he was inspired to become a filmmaker when he inexplicably heard a gust of wind while painting and saw the artwork moving across the canvas.

This moment defined his obsession with “seeing paintings move” and his nearly 40-year talent for bizarre distortions of reality on both the small and big screens.

The 78-year-old American director, who died just months after announcing his emphysema diagnosis, became a contemporary face of the bizarre, disturbing world that often hides in everyday life – from TV series Twin Peaks to Blue Velvet “, “Mulholland Drive” and “Inland Empire” and other movies.

A self-described daydreamer, Lynch rose to prominence at midnight movie screenings with 1977’s “Eraserhead.” Disorienting horror, a commentary on male paranoia, set the layered template for his work.

Forty years later, he lived to see his style entered as an adjective in the Oxford Dictionary. Lin Qian, it saysblurring “the surreal or sinister elements with the mundane” – a tribute to the four-time Oscar nominee and later Lifetime Achievement Award winner, whose characters are as important as his films.

David Keith Lynch was born on January 20, 1946 in Missoula, Montana. His father, a research scientist at the Department of Agriculture, spent much of his early life moving from state to state with his siblings.

However, Lynch’s parents encouraged his artistic ambitions from an early age. In a 1990 interview with Rolling Stone, he said his mother “saved” him by encouraging him to draw on scrap paper rather than using a coloring book because “the whole idea was to stay between the lines.”

This spirit inspired his films, tinged with a rebellious streak that he mocked from the age of 14 until he was 30. “People rebel for so long now”, he reasoned, “because we are designed to live longer”.

The young man’s frustration with quiet suburban life left him longing for “something out of the ordinary” that would challenge the superficial family ideals of the 1950s – and his films and TV series turned this dark dream into reality.

Lynch’s black-and-white debut “Eraserhead,” in which the title character descends into madness after giving birth to a monstrous baby, realizes this vision more successfully than his art school years.

Critics were baffled, but the film’s late-night success sparked a breakthrough when an audience member recommended him to Mel Brooks, who asked him to direct “The Elephant Man.”

Co-written by Lynch and featuring an ultimate cast of screen icons, including John Hurt as Merrick and Anthony Hopkins, the film transforms a tale of shame into a deeply moving, critically acclaimed tale whose beats surpasses the original stage play.

Lynch received Oscar nominations for best director and adapted screenplay as part of the film’s eight nominations, including best picture.

But if Hollywood thought it had found a new master of the blockbuster, it quickly discovered that Lynch had no interest in going mainstream with his 1984 adaptation of the sci-fi epic Dune.

Featuring questionable special effects, costumes and baby-oiled rock star Sting, Charles Bramesco for The Guardian wrote that Lynch’s experiments left the series “radioactive for decades.” “I’m proud of everything but Dune,” Lynch later said in a YouTube Q&A, while admitting that it nearly “killed” his career elsewhere.

However, his wounds began to heal as he returned and redoubled his commitment to his signature style – putting his fascination with America’s nastiness in the spotlight.

“Blue Velvet,” starring “Dune’s” Kyle MacLachlan, tells the story of a small-town boy who gets drawn into the underworld after discovering a severed ear. Critics were divided due to the film’s brutality and violence, but Lynch won his second Academy Award for Best Director.

“This was the America I thought of,” Lynch later wrote of the film in his book Lynch on Lynch. “There is a very innocent, innocent quality to life, but also a fear and illness”.

In 1990, he won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for the romantic drama “Wild at Heart,” starring Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern and Willem Dafoe.

But it was Lynch’s belief that America’s beauty and terror were two sides of the same coin, a belief that was refined in the television show Twin Peaks , released that same year, that would ultimately define him.

On the surface, this unsettling drama explores the murky events that followed the murder of teenage beauty queen Laura Palmer in an American logging town, who is unforgettably resurrected by Sheryl Lee .

But audiences were really drawn to what it delivered on screen: a fantastical nightmare that included FBI agent Dale Cooper, reprising his role from Kyle MacLachlan. , these characters are all very unique, appearing comfortable on the surface in fenced-in America—cherry pie and coffee included—and then arriving without hesitation into living rooms, with chilling undercurrents of sexual abuse and murder. This is a show that has never been seen on American television.

The ABC show won three Golden Globe Awards in 1991, including Best Television Series and Best Actor in a Television Series for MacLachlan.

“Half of your favorite shows wouldn’t exist without Twin Peaks and its vast expansion of what’s possible on television.” James Packer writes for The Atlantic.

The show, he continued, “effectively renegotiated television’s contract with viewers.”

It doesn’t really matter where the second season goes after the killer is revealed. Television is no longer safe, it’s inherently active – and the creativity and production values ​​of the big screen have somehow found their way into living rooms in an era when the silver screen still reigns supreme.

In 1992, a prequel feature film, Fire Walk with Me, brought audiences back to Twin Peaks, but nothing could compare to the original.

When the nation asks “Who killed Laura Palmer?” it’s not just about solving the mystery, but about finding refuge from a corrupt reality that society would rather ignore. Lynch discovered his dark side.

He eventually shifted his focus back to the big screen, attacking Hollywood’s nefarious ploys of fame, glamor, deception and identity loss in films informally known as his Los Angeles Trilogy.

It all started with 1997’s “Lost Highway,” followed by 2001’s “Mulholland Drive,” perhaps the closest aesthetic to “Twin Peaks.”

The psychological drama was critically acclaimed, earning Lynch his third Oscar nomination for Best Director and winning the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. In recent years, it has also been recognized for its queer themes, particularly those between Naomi Voight and Laura Harlin’s characters, which challenged traditional Hollywood storytelling at the time.

The last was 2006’s “Inland Empire,” Lynch’s last feature film, which proved to be as heartbreaking as ever, an unsparing showcase of Hollywood star culture.

As Mike Muncer told BBC Arts’ Inside Cinema: “Lynch draws us in with a safety net of familiar traditional genres, thrillers and mysteries, before the weirdness begins to creep in.

“Eventually, the mystery box is opened, revealing a darker, more sinister story that Lynch has actually been telling us.”

Lynch enjoyed a cult status in his later years. In 2017, he directed a new series, “Twin Peaks: The Return,” which takes place 25 years after the original show and features much of the same cast.

Meanwhile, the show’s legacy continues with inspiring TV series like True Detective and 2023’s critically acclaimed Playstation survival horror game Alan Wake II.

Off-camera, Lynch admits that he sometimes struggles to balance fatherhood and his career as a “tricky thing.”

He welcomed four children – Jennifer, Austin, Riley and Lula – with ex-wife Peggy Reavie, Mary Fisk and Mary Sweeney and estranged wife Emily Stoffel.

“I love all my children and we get along great, but in the early years, before you can have a conversational relationship with them, it’s difficult,” he told the vultures. “Work is the most important thing, and I know I suffer because of it. But at the same time, I have so much love for my kids.”

Although Lynch never returned to feature film directing to give himself another chance at the elusive Oscar, he was awarded an honorary statuette for lifetime achievement by the Academy in 2019. He also has a cameo in Steven Spielberg’s 2022 semi-autobiographical film Fableman. , playing film producer John Ford.

Towards the end of his life, his artistic pursuits increasingly diversified, shifting from his initial passion for painting to music. Just last year, he released an album, Cellophane Memories, with Chrystabell. This adds to his previous work producing music videos for artists such as Moby and Nine Inch Nails.

Speaking about his emphysema diagnosis last summer, he said he was in “great shape” and would “never retire”.

He added that the diagnosis was the “price” of his smoking habit, although he did not regret the pleasure it gave him.

But within months his condition worsened. Lynch told People magazine in November that he needs oxygen to walk.

Yet his ideas remain, as unique as the way he describes his thinking.

Speaking to musician Patti Smith on BBC Newsnight in 2014, he said: “My thoughts are in fragments. It’s like there’s a puzzle in another room – all the pieces are there Together.

“But in my room they were throwing them at me one piece at a time.”