CV
Education
2006 BA Art History, University of North Carolina, Asheville, NC
Solo exhibitions
2017 Entanglements, Revolve Gallery, Asheville, NC
2014 SightsUnforeseen, Upstairs Artspace, Tryon, NC
2013 SightsUnseen, Flood Fine Arts Center, Asheville, NC
2009 Beyond Body, Flood Fine Arts Center, Asheville, NC
2001 To Be Human, Wynn Bone Gallery – St. Augustine, FL
2000 The Instrumentality of a Disparate Conscience, Zone One Contemporary, Asheville, NC
2000 Visiting artist and exhibition, Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA
1993 New Painting/Sculpture - Chelsea Gallery, Cullowhee, NC
1991 Paintings in Progress - Jailhouse Gallery, Morganton, NC
Group exhibitions
2023-2024 Virtual Tart, New Zealand, online exhibition space: www.virtual.tart.co.nz
2023 Delta National Small Prints Exhibition – Bradbury Art Museum, Jonesboro, AK
2021 Do You Know Me – with Adam Larsen – Flood Fine Arts Center, Black Mountain, NC
2019 Domestic Bliss, Flood Gallery, Black Mountain, NC
2018 Entanglements & Sights Unseen, Greenkill Gallery, Kingston, New York
2014 Errata: Art, The Faux Book Club, Downtown Books & News, Asheville, NC
2014 Modern Day Heroes, Invitational, Flood Fine Arts Center, Asheville, NC
2013 les demoiselles d’Asheville, Invitational, Curatorium, Hudson, NY
2013 (rescued) Curatorium, Elwood Beach Fine Art, Curatorium, Hudson, NY
2009 Child, Invitational, Upstairs Artspace, Tryon, NC
2008 Catholicity: virtual exhibition: visual art and writing invitational: www.sisyphusproject.net
2007 Loyal Opposition, Invitational, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX
2006 Justice for All - Ongoing online exhibition, Austin, TX: www.deathpenaltyartshow.org
2006 American Standard, Meadow’s Museum of Art. Shreveport, LA
2005 American Standard, Asheville Arts Council, Asheville, NC
2004 Too Long at the Fair, Upstairs Artspace, Tryon, two-person exhibition
2004 Art on the Bias, Upstairs Gallery, Tryon, NC
2003 The News, Ion Gallery, Asheville, NC & Western North Carolina University Gallery
2003 Annual Small Works, Invitational, Blue Mountain Gallery New York, NY
2003 The Love Show, invitational, Semi-Public, Asheville, NC
1999 Gallerie Ruth Sachse, invitational, Hamburg, Germany
1999 Delta National Small Prints juried exhibition Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, AK
1998 Works on Paper, Zone One Contemporary, Asheville, NC
1997 Northeast Ohio Print Annual 9, William Busta Gallery, Cleveland OH
1997 Works on Paper 4th Annual Small Works Invitational, Blue Mountain Gallery, New York, NY
1996 Works on Paper, 3rd Annual Small Works invitational, Blue Mountain Gallery, New York, NY
1995 Prison Series Zone One Contemporary, two-person exhibition, Asheville, NC
1995 31st Annual Exhibition of Art on Paper, juried, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC
1995 Works on Paper, 2nd Annual Small Works Invitational, Blue Mountain Gallery, New York, NY
1994 Works on Paper, 1st Annual Small Works Invitational, Blue Mountain Gallery, New York, NY
1993 New Work, Zone One Contemporary Invitational, Asheville, NC
1991 The Self as Other - Waterworks Visual Arts Center, Salisbury, NC
1991 30/30 - World Gallery, Invitational, Asheville, NC
1989 Life as the Figure, two-Palm Beach Community College, Lake Worth, FL 1988 Billboard Art, Public Art Project, Asheville, NC
Words
2021 Penny’s Nails: Halcyone Press, Black Mountain, NC
2019 Slavery’s Descendants: edited by Dionne Ford and Jill Strauss, pp.158
2017 Holler Review: www.holleravl.org
2016 Linda Larsen with a bit of sass; with observations by Elwood Beach; Scion Press
2013 Asheville Citizen-Times: (review below)
2009 Asheville Arts Review: www.audienceasheville.com/linda-larsen-unlimited
2006 The Secret Life of Bees: A One-way Entitlement to Intimacy. Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities for the State of North Carolina, Inaugural Edition
2006 Art Papers: Review by James Thompson (pg. 63-70)
Collections
Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC
Elwood Beach Fine Art, Hudson, NY
The Fine Art Museum, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC
Misc private collections in the United States
Residencies
2008 The Hambidge Center
2015 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
2019 Crown Point Press Summer Intensive
Employment/Engagement
1996-present Co-owner: Centering on Children, Inc.
June 2013 Curator: Full-Spectrum Art Exhibition/Autism Pride Week
2007-2010 Board of Directors: Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center
1999-2002 Assistant to artist, Mel Chin
1995-1999 Associate: Western Carolinians for Criminal Justice & the Women at Risk Program
Asheville artist’s exhibition talks about history of slavery
by Arnold Wengrow
January 30, 2014 - Asheville Citizen Times
When Asheville artist Linda Larsen began using seashells instead of humans as models in early 2010, something puzzling happened. She had stopped working for awhile after an autumn 2009 solo show of figurative paintings. “I didn’t know what do to, I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she said. She decided to set up some still lifes with seashells collected from visits to Edisto Island, S.C. “At least they don’t move around like a model,” she said.
Shells are complicated to draw and she used them to “get myself back in training again,” she said. They were a neutral subject to experiment with the formal qualities of painting. But portraits of African heads began appearing among the shells in what Larsen calls “a waking dream.” As she watched the heads evolve, she realized she was meditating on slavery. “The heads and the shells on the beach are the presence I feel when I go to the beach,” she said, “especially the Charleston area, where a profitable slave trade took place.”
As she painted, she was asking herself questions. What is it like to be separated from family and culture and forced into conditions not fit for an animal? What would it be like to be denied education and access to the privileges that I take for granted?
Photo: Ivana Larrosa , Special to the Citizen-Times
“In a broad sense we are all in bondage to enslaved ways of thinking and reacting,” Larsen said, “and maybe this is our common humanity. But none of us white people were actually physically enslaved, and that’s a big difference and something I wanted to better understand.”
Larsen’s three-year meditation and questioning is now coming together in a new set of paintings she calls “Sights Unseen.” The exhibition opens Saturday at the Flood Gallery Fine Arts Center in the River Arts District. Opening a conversation about race Larsen acknowledges she was uncomfortable as a white artist responding to the experience of black people. She took some of the images she had started to her friend Deborah “Dee” James, a professor of literature and language at UNC Asheville. She had taken a seminar on Toni Morrison with James in 2004. Larsen told her, “I just want your take on it. I think it has to do with slavery and especially the Igbo people.”
The Igbo of Nigeria were one of the main groups affected by the Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and late 19th century. James lent Larsen books about slavery. In a recent interview, James said she understood Larsen might be asking permission to portray slavery issues. “I’m not in a position to sanction or not sanction her artistic expressions,” she said. “What I applaud is that she is listening to her intuition. One of the toughest things artists must face is paying attention to an intuition and taking that risk.”
As for the paintings themselves, James said, “Some I like, some I’m not particularly drawn to. The images are disturbing. They all speak to me of the Middle Passage.” James says Larsen has worked hard to educate herself. “Linda wants these images to open a conversation about race,” she said. “One of the themes the pictures bring up is the way our contemporary culture is haunted by the idea of the black experience. It makes sense that the haunting emerges as images of the Middle Passage.”
In the end, Larsen said, “I realize I’m no sociologist or historian. As an artist I get the picture. The gaps that are so glaring in my articulation of the subject are best left to the scholars.” As she sat looking at the whole series of paintings, she said, “I realize that this is MY experience. I’m not trying to interpret this for anyone else or say it’s THE truth. It’s simply what I experience and have communicated in painting.”
Asheville writer Arnold Wengrow is a contributing editor of Theatre Design and Technology magazine.