Biography – Linda Christensen

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Linda Christensen Artist Portrait

Linda Christensen Artist Portrait

I work with paint as an attempt to capture my feelings. My goal is to find an image that tells the truth, and honestly reveals my emotions without being too explicit, or too demonstrative. My painting teases. I yearn to fully express my true nature and authentic emotional self but balk at exposing myself too completely, at leaving myself utterly naked and vulnerable.

I paint figures because a figure offers shapes that inherently carry emotion. There is information in the tilt of the head, in the slouch of the shoulders, something that tells an emotional story. I don’t allow too much of the pretty, relying instead on the emotion of the hand to say what I want to say. I put down layer after layer of paint, waiting for shapes and color combinations to rise up and say something; to say enough of what I am feeling to satisfy. I fight with the paint, at times becoming so angry that I strip everything off, scraping the layers of work into the trashcan and layering anew. The process is like a video and the painting is the last frame of the day but not of the film. What remains is but a fraction of what has been laid down, yet the final image is not possible without both the emotional struggle and the physical act of putting on paint and pulling it back off.