Artist Statement
The Repository series, spanning five years, explores my journey with collage. My collage paintings originate from various sources, including moods, thoughts, and personal struggles. I serve as a conduit for mixed emotions.
The newest pieces blend figurative elements from earlier works into new contexts, bridging my artistic development. They represent a repository of memory, process, and growth.
Many works begin with a word’s skeleton, revealing itself to me. Absorbed by experiences or ideas, I translate that energy through collage.
Asemic writing, a form of mark-making, adds depth to my abstract process. Not tied to language, it springs from the subconscious, memories, intuition, and emotion. These gestures can become the skeleton of a painting or the final punctuation mark. Though I may know the words when I begin writing them, they are soon absorbed, woven into the surface, and transformed and I encourage viewers to feel an emotional resonance in their traces.
Sometimes, a captivating figure emerges from a painting, inspiring me to trace, enlarge, shrink, and revisit it through collage. Each iteration expands on the last, carrying forward echoes of the past.
Bio
A Western New York native, Linda, the oldest of nine children, was born and raised in an artistic environment in Tonawanda and spent her adult life in Grand Island where still resides with her husband.
With art always a major priority, Coppola has worn many hats. She spent many years of creative domesticity focused on family. At the same time she worked as a 911 dispatcher she created handmade jewelry in a business called Mixed Emotions through which she sold her creations at various area venues. She took classes, studied with artists and volunteered at various regional arts organizations. Her artistic evolution has now transitioned to focus almost exclusively on painting and collage.
Relationships have always attracted and fascinated her, and this is consistently seen symbolically in her work Throughout her life (and in response to it,) her distinct sense of style has steadily matured while ironically becoming more childlike and clear.
Linda is an exhibiting member at Hallwalls, an associate member with Buffalo Society of Artists and currently has work displayed through Hunt Gallery at Luminescence Aesthetics in Buffalo and with ERLO Contemporary in East Aurora. Linda’s work can also be found on 1stdibs.com and artsy.net.
Instagram @linda.coppola.art