Linda Larsen Studio

Work: 1960 – 2024

 

My art career began as a child, on the lookout for materials to work with; for surfaces to work on — walls, undersides of furniture, cloth and linens. Using tools to reconfigure jewelry and make new objects was a way to see myself and to ground myself in the material world.

 

My non-career held tight to itself, mostly learning from looking at art and taking classes with artists whose work made sense to me. I eventually found people who appreciated my leanings, and often traded drawings and paintings for essential needs.

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On my own, I finally found a safe harbor in a Sufi Ashram where I lived and worked seriously at making art. When I met Ron Larsen there, we fell in love. Most importantly, he fell in love with my work.

 

Rearing two children in South Florida in the early Seventies, I found a nearby community college and studied anatomy and life-drawing with Reuben Hale for six years. Although Reuben didn’t say a lot, he brought a powerful presence to the way in which students learned to see and draw and I drank it in.

 

Moving to Asheville, North Carolina was pivotal. I found working artists. I studied printmaking with Porge Buck at the Intaglio Relief Center (IRS), participated in Robert Godfrey‘s MA Critiques at Western Carolina University, and assisted conceptual artist, Mel Chin in his Burnsville studio. Each of these experiences broadened my understanding of what art could be and what it could do.

 

Finally, in 2005, I graduated from the University of North Carolina, Asheville, with BA in Art History.

 

The human figure has its own language. My natural practice of looking at bodies, watching how they move; their facial expressions, gestures, posture, has held my attention through the course of my life. In my studio practice, their reverberations and my interpretations bring me nearer to my feelings and to the humanness of others.

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This written statement, like a woven garment, eventually loosens or catches on a fingernail and unwinds. Words wearing out and wearing on with time.