Pasadena-born Judith Linhares has been a working artist since her teens, which goes a long way towards explaining the painter’s complex language of symbolism. Sailboats, rabbits, women, skeletons, man-munching Amazons, fire, Snow White, honeybees and blossoms all find their way into Linhares’ work, realized in exuberant colors that belie a certain macabre undercurrent. Maybe more than macabre.
A sharp wit also finds its expression in Linhares’ paintings, and fittingly she counts among her influences Max Beckmann, Edvard Munch, Symbolist painting and Surrealism, all of which become evident in the fact that her images have a way of searing themselves into the more sensitive regions of a viewer’s brain. These are paintings, in other words, that are hard to forget.
In a 2006 interview in BOMB magazine the artist noted that Painters share in a long and complex tradition going back to the caves, which is both a pleasure and a burden. It’s a pleasure to see a Roman fresco of rabbits in a field and recognize the technical mastery and think, I am one of these craftsmen. This tradition is also a burden, because all painting is seen against a backdrop of this history. The challenge is to use what has been cultivated without being seen only in terms of historic style.
Here’s to the eternal mystery of image-making!
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