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Linda Gardner’s exhibition, “A Familiar Language,” offers a multi-faceted exploration of the inner self through the dreamlike kaleidoscope of shapes and bold colors in her abstract paintings.
“A Familiar Language” presents an artistic vision of “an alternative reality through the use of form and color,” Ms. Gardner explains. “My paintings function as a window and a mirror, offering a space where one’s mind can wonder and play, a world of personal associations and emotions, a place to visually linger and nourish one’s self.”
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Ms. Gardner has worked for the past 21 years as a free-lance illustrator, garnering numerous awards in Connecticut and Massachusetts for her work in advertising and graphic design in both print and on-line media. In recent years, she has diversified into website design and development and, since 2002, has created a growing body of work in abstract paintings that have been featured at exhibitions in Connecticut and Rhode Island. She currently resides and paints in Middletown, CT.
Ms. Gardner’s art speaks in a vocabulary of bold and suggestive forms that often incorporate portions of her own graphic illustrations and plein air landscape studies. Her goal, she says, is to create a unique world that frees the viewer’s imagination “to invent its own story and find its own expression.
“Relationships assert themselves, stories unfold, a part of us wakes up,” Ms. Gardner observes. “Emotional energy enlivens the suggestive message which rumbles deep inside, like the recollection of a dream. Like a melody seeking words, I seek to reveal that part of me which resonates with that which is outside.”\
Ms. Gardner’s paintings are part of prestigious private and public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum and the Best Corporation. She is a three-time winner of the Charles A. Stein Award of the Advertising Club of Western Massachusetts, most recently in 2004, and has received additional honors in print magazine, advertising and poster design competitions in southern New England. She is a past president of the Communication Arts Collective of Western Massachusetts and has traveled widely in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Her diverse artistic interests have inspired avocations in the performing arts as well, including dance and violin.
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