When a stunning scene catches her eye, the beautiful artist and printmaker pulls out her sketchbook, taking care to record shapes, forms, colors and textures in front of her.
Then, back in her studio in Wolverhampton, she works with these drawings and memories of the day to create a final work of art.
Linda, who for many years taught art at Bilston Community College and the City of Wolverhampton College, describes her prints and paintings as “expressions of joy and delight”.
She works in pastel and oil and also uses a range of printmaking techniques such as monotype printmaking, collography and lino to create pieces using her Gunning press.
Linda took her first steps towards a career in art after being encouraged to attend university as a mature student while working at Sussex University in Brighton.
“I left school at 15 and took a secretarial course. The best person I worked for was Asa Briggs, who was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex.
“It was one of the first universities to have adult students. One day he said to me: you don’t want to do this job, you should be a student.
“I wanted to study art history and there were three courses where I could study full time but I needed two languages. I looked for jobs in Europe and opted for Brussels I lived there for two years and managed to pick up enough French and some Italian.
“I did a four-year Art History (MA Hons) degree at the University of Edinburgh. After graduating I decided to take a course in teaching English as a foreign language and taught art history and England in Sweden.
“I was teaching in the mornings and evenings and skiing in the afternoons. I had to go back to Britain because at the time Sweden wasn’t in the UK, but we were. , and I couldn’t have a work permit for longer than three years.
“In 1986 I moved to Wolverhampton. The art scene here is getting better and better. I’ve gotten to know so many people and it’s the people who have kept me here,” Linda told Weekend .
While working as a university tutor, Linda studied for an Honors degree in Printmaking at the University of Wolverhampton.
In 2007, she also studied printmaking at New Grounds in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as part of an Arts Council funded study tour, photographing motels, trading posts, gas stations often deserted as well as the landscape along Route 66.
“The new road has been paralleled with Route 66 so that people don’t have to take Route 66 anymore so all the way there are these old gas stations and stores, it’s like time had stopped. You can drive along Route 66 and see no one else, which is a bit strange, and then you come across an old gas station,” says Linda, who is a member of the Wolverhampton Society of Artists.
Since 2013 she has been a full-time artist, exhibiting in the UK and overseas, selling work on her website and accepting commissions.
In 2017, she had an engraving ‘On bare mountain’ selected by the Victoria and Albert Museum for their permanent collection.
Her drypoint print ‘From here to there’ is held in the archives of the Printmakers Council and has been chosen for inclusion in the artuk.org database for UK public art collections.
In 2018 one of Linda’s prints was exhibited at the Mall Galleries in London as a shortlisted artist for the A&I Artist of the Year Award and in the same year she was voted associate member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA).
Although she has a passion for landscapes and seascapes such as those in the Lake District, the Shropshire countryside and Cannock Chase Forest, she is also drawn to social issues such as homelessness.
An engraving titled Homed and Homeless shows a number of blue tents set up in front of a canalside apartment block in Wolverhampton town centre.
“It was the contrast between houses where people have heat, lights, fridges and warm beds and tents where people probably only had a sleeping bag. In fact, it was snowing and it It was very cold. There was a lack of security and the tents could be moved at any time. The following week, the tents were gone,” explains Linda.
Linda donated the proceeds from the sale of her homelessness prints to a local food bank. “It’s fine for me to sell a few pieces and I do that quite regularly, but that’s not what drives me,” she says.
Currently, she is exhibiting a print of a fallen Lake District in the society’s Print Prize exhibition, which runs until February 26, at the RBSA Gallery.
Fifteen of Linda’s landscapes created in vibrant pastels will also be on display at the Ironbridge Fine Arts Gallery from March to May and she will also have four prints in the Birmingham Art Circle exhibition at the Weston Park Granary Gallery in March.
“I love the excitement of developing an idea, whether it’s the light on a landscape or how to describe this contract between homeless people and sheltered people.
“With each piece, I want to convey what I felt about the landscape or what I felt about the question,” Linda explains.
