Color + Figure
Paintings by Linda Christensen
Presented by Blue Ribbon Circle
February 11, 2021 – September 4, 2021
Linda Christensen, Latitude, oil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches. Courtesy of Gail Severn Gallery.
Painter Linda Christensen is captivated by humanity and the intimate moments that pull a person from the collective experience and inward. Belonging to the Bay Area Figurative movement's rich tradition, Christensen's work is dynamic and an amalgamation of spontaneity, historical reference, and emotional milieu. After finding her way back to painting following a twenty-year hiatus prompted by marriage and raising children, a visceral connection to David Park and his painting Two Bathers, reminded Christensen of her mother and a long-forgotten childhood memory. This deep emotional response stood as the motivation for her intentions as a painter and began a pursuit of using the figure to document the subtleties of the inner life and how abstract thoughts manifest in a person's body language and situation.
Linda Christensen, Em, 2017, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches. Courtesy of the Artist.
After twenty years of painting, Christensen's work epitomizes the First Generation of Bay Area Figurative painters; with an awareness of Park's sweeping brushstrokes and classically built compositions, Diebenkorn's modernist lines and patchwork grids that allude to the horizon, and a paralleled romance with Bischoff's elegant washes of color and subtle chromatic transitions. Where Christensen's work claims its own is in its authentic and intuitive representation of the often-isolated female figure in a moment of rumination. The figure finds herself amidst abstracted landscapes or the domestic interiors of everyday life but most significantly in moments of solace.
Inspiration originates for each scene from one of three categories: Nature as Catalyst, Access through Ritual, and Musings. Each painting revels in the tenderness and reflection of human nature. Though not intimate in size, Christensen's work centers on the meditations of mind and body, set within an interface of gestural brushstrokes and harmonious color palettes.
Find Linda Christensen’s art book in our Gift Shop
(When viewing the exhibition online on a mobile device, rotate your device into landscape view for ideal viewing experience.)
Curator Rachel Magnus and Moneywise’s David Anderson sat down with the artist to discuss the Bay Area Figurative movement and Christensen’s commitment to using color and gesture to capture the emotional weight of the figure in episode 5 of our podcast.
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