Formal Mimicry: Artworks by Linda Henningson By Dallas Jeffs
Magnify Series #4, acrylic on canvas
Mixed media artist Linda Henningson creates abstracted artworks that express a sense of formal mimicry, often appearing deceptively close to floral and landscape forms. Linda has also recently been creating text-based works, in which hand-painted words and phrases appear on top of psychedelic backgrounds.
I’m really enjoying Linda’s recent mixed media artworks – these are some of the most realistically rendered, and yet bizarrely dream-like landscapes that I’ve seen. In the series, Linda has painted a variety of subdued natural landscapes with deep greens and earthy tones for trees, grass and water. Each painting is then washed with a ghostly layer of white, creating a strangely veiled appearance as if the image is being viewed through a sheet of mesh of tulle fabric.
Mixed media artworks in Linda's online portfolio
Linda’s Hand-Painted Signs series is a little more upbeat, using saturated colours and, frequently, glitter. The text featured on these signs is vaguely nonsensical, removed from its context, and yet still has a celebratory tone, like in Eat Pie and be Merry, or Yes I am Ready.
The Overview Effect featuring Edgar Mitchell
Sharing my cake with Rosa Parks, Fernand Leger and Alice Cooper.
Celebration of Shape and Form: Paintings by Linda Henningson By Dallas Jeffs
Our featured artist for today is Linda Henningson. Linda graduated from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC, in 2006 and has been painting professionally ever since. Her works are colourful and expressive in their use and celebration of shape and form.
Many of Linda’s paintings echo natural forms, vaguely emulating the shapes of plants, or coral, or even microscopic systems and cellular diagrams. In her most recent paintings, she takes the recognizable shapes of plants that a botanist could surely name offhand, and combines them with bizarre, outlandish colour schemes, and places them in otherworldly scenes.
Linda Henningson's paintings from 2012, on www.lindahenningson.com
These plants are beautiful, but I really like the way that Linda can easily bring her work into the realm of pure abstraction, without losing anything in the composition. She explores colour relations, texture, and shape often all in the same painting, while favouring rounded, blob-like organic forms. These can appear as giant, planetary objects looming over an entire side of the canvas, and they can also orbit the larger forms or dot the rest of the canvas, swarming and rising together.
Cross-country skiing Christmas eve