Lin Price
Ithaca, New York
Website
www.linprice.com
How would you describe your work?
My paintings are often figures in landscapes, but with a reality rearranged by memory and mind’s eye.
What inspires you?
People and places inspire my work. The derelict woods and fields that surround my home in Upstate New York are filled with painterly possibilities that feed my imagination. This place, for which I have affection, has human-like dimensionality. It reacts to stressors such as invasive species of plants and insects, caused by climate change and lack of economic support. I’m interested in the emotional range of this place, from sorrow to elation, gloomy after weeks of smoke from the wild fires in Canada, then unanticipated joy when warm light washes over it and suddenly the birds are busy in the hedgerows.
Can you speak about your process?
I like to keep learning and trying new things, experiments. I study the woods and fields that surround my house and note their mood swings. I make tons of very crude sketches that are like short-hand when planning a painting. Plans are good, but mine usually change. I read. I look at art from all periods of art history. I like to have my cat and dog nearby. I work on one painting until it’s finished before starting something else, this probably isn’t a good idea, but I do it nevertheless. I always begin in a gestural, expressive manner, and this is my favorite part of a painting. Sometimes parts of a painting become more delineated or realized as I go along, but if possible, I like to let some the awkward stuff remain, so one gets a sense of how a work was developed and the layers in it.
How did you become interested in art?
I believe it was in an introduction to painting course in college, and the first paintings I made there, when I realized that painting could be powerful and insightful. I became smitten with this thing that could describe concisely, all the aspects of being human.
Everything was there in a tube of color.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
There are many artists I admire across time, genre, medium, and style. It is a long list. Lately though I’ve been reconsidering Picasso and Matisse.
The book, “Art of Arts: Rediscovering Painting” by Anita Albus opened new inroads to to my understanding of the art form and why painting is critically different from other art forms.
My favorite quote is by painter, Amy Sillman: “Painting is the way you send out your signal, plot your course through precarious waters, navigate toward other vessels, other shorelines, other people. You steer that little square, and its un-straight lines, as it rises and sinks, and that is how you try to save your own life.”
