Low Down Articles
Artist Profiles - Linda Wright
Article 73 of 73
From the book Artists of the Gatineau Hill by Catherine Joyce. This article first appeared in the "Artist Profiles" column in the April 27, 2005 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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Back to the Garden
When Linda Wright began to paint her current series of landscapes, she noticed there is always a huge tree rising like a sentinel over abandoned farms. Planted by hand but slowly taken over by the wild, these trees seem to stand at the nexus of generations, rooted in earth and sky, symbolic of a way of life that is passing. "They are like family trees. And even as the people move away, they remain there like emblems of ancient knowledge, still growing, still climbing."
A founding member of Galerie Old Chelsea and a regular on the Studio Tour, Wright has long celebrated family life. Known for her loving evocations of childhood, where each painting illustrates the freedom, discovery and delight of growing up, she sees herself as capturing the eternal story that everyone can relate to. In a world where the over-intellectualization of art has made us too sophisticated by half, she returns us to the heart - to the celebration of beauty, be it in the seasons of family life or of the land.
Growing up near Montreal, Wright spent her summers at her grandparents' cottage in the Eastern Townships a dreamy world of lying long afternoons on the porch with the wind blowing. "I think that's where it first started - that longing to capture that feel of the land, of being a child in the land." Although she did not know she would become an artist, she took a year at Dawson College studying creative arts and literature, a time to explore philosophic ideas without pressure. She then went on to a BFA at the University of Calgary, where she worked on seismic surveys in the summer. "The Alberta sky was like a large canvas - you could imagine filling it, the possibilities were limitless."
After a brief period of abstract experimenting, she began to explore what compelled her in the Group of Seven. She was drawn to Emily Carr with her swirling lines of light, and equally to the work of Whistler with his flattening of the picture plane. The urge to paint became driven as much by spiritual as aesthetic questions - particularly when she became a parent - the desire to communicate love, faith and hope, to put that energy out there.
Wright works intuitively and thoughtfully. While her paintings are representational, she interprets freely. Fascinated by light, she used colours in opposition to express agitation/energy in her evocations of childhood. Today, with her landscapes, she is employing a new understanding of form and colour as she explores the play of light over these hills, farms and riverbeds. She bears witness to 150 years of history in a landscape that is slipping away from us. Something indefinable is being lost. In so doing, she takes us back to the Garden, to that Edenic world that belongs to each of us - with its family trees, open spaces and overarching, light-filled sky.