O’Brien has been making and exhibiting her work since studying art as an undergraduate at Pima Community College and the University of Arizona in Tucson. After completing a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, she found that careers open to her left little time for making art and so went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Nursing. Since then, she has worked as an operating room nurse, one member of a team functioning under critical and often highly stressful conditions; she came to Cleveland in 2000. Today she alternates hospital days with studio days, the transition between them requiring considerable discipline. Nonetheless, O’Brien finds the studio’s time-intensive research and experimentation, as well as its solo creativity, complement the collaborative and professional demands of her day job in a satisfying and sustainable way.

Lynn has exhibited her paintings widely in group exhibitions around the country -- Arizona, California, New Mexico, New Jersey, Florida, and Pennsylvania -- as well as in Great Britain. Her work may be seen in the Tucson International Airport and at the School of Business at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, as well as at the Boyer House Foundation in San Rafael, California and the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes. O’Brien has lived and worked in the Cleveland area since 2000 and has exhibited in many other venues in northeastern Ohio since then.