How did showing in the exhibition impact your career as an artist?
“I received the Mr. & Mrs. John H. Gilliam Award and felt validated as an artist.”
Artist Statement
In the early 90’s, I took a printmaking course and fell in love with the process. Unlike other passionate relationships that fade with time, the passion and love I have for printmaking has only gotten more intense. Several years ago, I started exploring mixed media and have found that combining collage and monotype is another relationship that works for me. I also enjoy combining photography and digital imaging with traditional printmaking techniques. My use of traditional printmaking techniques combined with experimental approaches is a means of expanding my visual language. The possibilities are exponential.
Nature nurtures and inspires me. I combine elements of nature, texture, and design along with the magic of the press. I am intrigued by memory and what remains in our mind’s eye. My work reflects scenes from travel near and far. More than a report of how it was exactly, I am interested in my expressive and passionate response to the color and pattern of the landscape, experience or image. My work has overlapping layers of color and space, shifting relationships with mark making that includes monotype, silkscreen, stencil, image transfer, and drawing. Inspired by memories from travel, I am creating visual memoirs which offer multiple meanings to the viewer. I create art that is a mixture of what I see with my eyes and the truth of what I see in my heart.
My focus on the process, not the outcome, frees me to be experimental. Following my passion and living my dream energizes me to be productive and alive. I feel like I am living out loud. I want to share that passion and joie de vivre with those seeing my work, triggering a memory or experience for the viewer.
Through my art, I strive to create and appreciation for natural beauty and a concern for its preservation.
Finding beauty in things that are falling apart or decaying brings me joy. I see rust and appreciate the patterns, I see peeling paint and wonder at the layers. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. I make beautiful images out of photographs of decaying things. I then Photoshop them and have an archival pigment print made, then adding various mark-making techniques to embellish the final version.
Artist Biography
Linda Dubin Garfield, an award-winning printmaker and mixed media artist, creates visual memoirs exploring the mystery of memory and the magic of place using hand-pulled printmaking techniques, photography, collage, and digital imaging. Her abstract and dynamic works use multiple layers of ink that waver between background and foreground, creating a fusion of surface design and abstract expressionism. She also creates installations that include public participatory art, especially when she is exploring themes relating to women in today’s culture.
In 2005, she founded ARTsisters, a group of professional artists who empower each other and their community through art. In 2007, she started smART Business Consulting, helping emerging artist reach their goals and their audience by providing consulting and coaching on the business side of art through individual, small groups, and workshop experiences as well as providing opportunities to exhibit work. She also provides art-making memoir workshops for organizations including Delaware Contemporary, First Person Arts, Da Vinci Art Alliance, Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Centers for Older Adults, Simpson House, and Atria Senior Living. Today she serves on several non-profit boards and appreciates her good fortune of being able to make art every chance she gets.