Linda Larson

I could not have a better place to work. My studio is at Hunters Point Shipyard, on the edge of San Francisco Bay, where the light, the dark, surrounding water, and wild urban landscape are a constant pleasure, inspiration, and influence. I start my work in a traditional way, using many translucent glazes of oil color layered onto a prepared wood panel, but what I am looking for is more mysterious even to me. As the layers absorb, stain, and reflect back, I am looking for that in-between place, like the moment of stepping under water and blinking within at the world that was there all the while. I try not to get attached to any one part as I work,, since I know I will sand through the layers and the first forms that emerged to find a deeper and more unknown direction to follow. If I were asked what artists I am drawn to, I would think of Remedios Varo—not because I am a surrealist, but because she excelled at finding that torque between reality and imagination, holding the space for emotion, color, narrative, and possibility, a new dimension of her own. For my own work, I want you to allow yourselves to be lost in the moment and find your own bearings in a heightened reality.