Linda Armantrout can’t remember a time before drawing. As an only child, she chalked up many hours of right brain bliss. Linda studied Studio Art at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1965 to 1969. Her painting teachers were abstract expressionists, who had studied at Black Mountain College. Her foundation in Art History came from John Sloane and William Alcott. Later, in Denver, she studied basic design and color theory with Edith Niblo, and then 20th century painting really fell into place. She has Monet, Charles Hawthorne, and Hans Hofmann in her student lineage.
 

Painting for Linda is about gesture, color, and relationships within the frame. Her intention is originality. She uses the elements of art and principles of design to support idea and communication. Teaching, since 1989, has encouraged her to think more deeply about art.

In 2006, Linda started the Power Image Series and alternated these horse paintings with abstracts from nature, The Glory Series. Recently, Linda had a solo exhibition of "Horse Power as Spirit" at the NCAR Gallery 1, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado.

Linda Armantrout is thrilled to be showing at Carla Wright Gallery, since January, 2009.

In the Power Image Series, I use the the form of the moving horse as a metaphor for Spirit. My process includes meditation, sketching, drawing, and color squares. I paint in the studio, mixing color on the palette and brushing oil paint on large canvases. I manipulate line to make energy visible. I manipulate color to make emotions visible.

The Glory Series is about the coexistence of the divine and the mundane. Previously, I painted an immediate and spontaneous series of 5”x7” impressions (Playing in the Key of Light). I used primed masonite board, and mixed the colors with palette knife directly on the board. The 12”x12” Glory Series is an explosion of those images with that technique and an expression of my inner nature. The forms become abstracted by scale and deletion. The color is perceptual.

I paint to make a connection to Source, to nature, and to others. Color is my primary element. I am passionate about oil painting and pursuing luminosity of color.