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Filmmaker David Lynch has died. The writer, director and multi-faceted artist who studied art in Philadelphia went on to make movies and television, such as “Twin Peaks,” “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive.” He won an honorary Academy Award in 2019 for his filmmaking career.

Lynch was 78 and had been diagnosed with emphysema after a lifetime of smoking. His death was announced Thursday via Facebook.

Born in Missoula, Montana, Lynch came to Philadelphia to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which later curated his first museum overview exhibition, “David Lynch: The Unified Field.”

Toward the end of his tenure at PAFA, he began experimenting with incorporating movement and sound into his paintings, culminating in a short film involving projection, sculpture, painting and sound design called “Six Men Getting Sick.”

“I only wanted to be a painter,” Lynch said in 2014 at PAFA. “Painting led to wanting to do a moving painting with sound. Cinema to me is sound and picture moving together in time. It was born out of painting.”

From Philly, he went to Los Angeles to study film, creating his first feature film “Eraserhead.” The deeply strange film set in an eerily claustrophobic urban environment became a cult hit and was influenced by his time living in the Spring Garden/Callowhill area of Philadelphia.

He lived near Poplar and Girard Avenue with his wife and infant daughter, where he witnessed a 13-year-old boy gunned down in the street. He said the experience influenced his vision for “Eraserhead.”

Local fans have dubbed the neighborhood Eraserhood.