Artist Spotlight: Linda Pearlman Karlsberg

Pond Impromptu

Massachusetts artist, Linda Pearlman Karlsberg is an award winning oil painter and co-owns and directs a photography studio, Studio Eleven with her husband.  After completing her BFA and MFA at Boston University School for the Arts, Linda taught fine art for quite some time while also painting on her own and raising a family.  

Her luminous work has been featured across the country in numerous juried exhibitions, galleries and catalogues including The National Steinbeck Center Museum, Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art and Point Park University. 

Linda has always enjoyed the arts and has fond memories of lessons with her grade school art teacher.  Her interest grew throughout school and she was able to take classes for high schoolers on Saturdays at the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Massachusetts College of Art.  She made the full commitment to art in college and chose oil painting, being inspired by some of the masters she studied in art history-- Vermeer, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Sargent, Eakins and Vuillard to name a few.  "I wanted to try to achieve some mastery.  I think with every painting I paint, I still work to find ways to apply the oil paints, so that the marks, the texture and the colors please me.  I think it is a challenge for a lifetime, to use the paint, to refine and develop my mark making, brush strokes and application.  I am still reaching for those aesthetic goals that those artists achieved and I see in their work," Linda explains.

June on the River

As oils and panels are her choices for her landscapes, still lifes and water lilies, Linda also believes in the choice of a great brush as an extension of her hands.  "Really excellent materials are the tools artists rely on, and they can either enable and enhance the process or in their absence, handicap one's process.  So brushes that hold their form, keep their spring, and don't fray too quickly are so important.  They allow me to be in control of the mark making, quality and character of the surface and build up of the paint," she says.  Linda uses a variety of brushes in her work, ranging from 0-10 in size, angles, flats, filbert brushes to rounds.  "They each offer their own different strength and signature trail or way of applying the paint."  

Water Lilies II

Linda's beautiful strokes and masterful work encompasses different series, most often the visuals around her that elicit a visceral response.  Linda paints the narrative and the quality of light that captures her subject, drawing her viewer into her story.  She explains further, "I search for those times and places where beauty is startling and suddenly present.  In the Landscapes, Water Lily, Lotus and Cloud series, I paint arresting color relationships that flare and bring a momentary expressiveness to these tranquil corners.  While celebrating these transient visions, I think these scenes also evoke life's fragility which is inherent in this perpetual reshaping and reordering, this cycle of abundance and loss."

Linda Pearlman Karlsberg's work will be on display this summer at the Danforth Art Museum and in the summer issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly.  You can also follow Linda's work from her website:
Lindapearlmankarlsberg.com.

Water Lilies XXV

Keep Painting,
Karyn

For more brush information, check out the Dynasty Brush website.