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Artist Statement

Linda Hope was born in Chambley, France to American parents. She studied art at Southwest Texas State University and the University of Texas at Austin. She moved to San Francisco in the early 1980's.

"The sources of the specific images in these paintings remain obscure, even to myself. I've thought about their derivation in terms of Jungian symbology or of archetypal forms, but these sorts of explanations seem lacking, superficial, too easy. These paintings are visual and metaphorical manifestations of the spiritual concerns and internal personal investigations of my life. In the most successful of instances, my paintings become embodiments of or allusions to the spiritual. The images suggest themselves to me, I do not seek them."

"It is common for me to have a sort of internal vision, whereby I am able to see a whole work in its state of perfect completion. If I am lucky, the vision is stark, brilliant and pure and will become the basis for a completed work. In my attempt to reconstruct my vision, the work of painting for me many involve dogged repainting, repositioning, shifting of colors and tonalities and backtracking, and because of this, the completion of a piece could take days, or months. At some point, I may recognize that I have gotten as close to my original vision as I am able to."

"Images that tend to recur are circles or rings and wheels; spheres or balls; disks and cones. Due to the layering of colors in an order of dark over light, or muted over intense, the surfaces possess a glowing quality, the light source remaining ambiguous but seeming to come from within."

"It is my hope that when people see my paintings, they will recognize something familiar; that the feelings engendered by the work itself will be similar to the feelings that gave impetus during its creation. And I hope that that elusive familiarity will occur without the struggle of intellectual mediation."

Linda Hope lives and works in San Francisco, California

Education

1978 BFA University of Texas, Austin TX
1974-76 Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos TX

Selected Collections

AT & T, San Francisco, CA
Xerox Corporation, Sunnyvale, CA
First Interstate Bank, San Francisco, CA
R. Dakin Headquarters, San Jose, CA