Linda Fenney
Couch
Bed
Chair
Uncertain Futures (Mo)
Uncertain Futures (Dan)
Artist Bio
Linda Fenney was born and spent her youth in London. She now lives and works in Northern California. She has painted throughout her life, and after a career as physician she enrolled in the MFA program at California College of Art. Her work is mainly in oil or acrylic on canvas. Her current work is large in scale (5X6ft) and while colorful, frequently addresses loss and uncertainty. Her paintings act as a barometer of her prevailing emotions.
Artist Statement
My painting is a reflection of the emotional currents of life around me that I process, unconsciously, sometimes interpreted as abstractions of color and form and sometimes as figures. As I have painted during the pandemic I have found that my images have increasingly come to reflect the unease of so many. The figures depicted have taken on an uneasy quality in their demeanor and form, as if they don’t know what to do or where to go anymore, they are alone, off center, figuratively marginalized, immobilized by their lack of power or control over the space in the world of the painting. They stare hopelessly at the sky, they sit in a world that no longer makes sense. I have also painted in this series what appear to be dependable, comforting refuges in cheerful, inviting colors – a warm bed, an overstuffed couch – sources of comfort that no longer seem accessible to the figures at the margins. The figures are absent from these comfortable refuges that may now feel like prisons. In this group of paintings, my canvases are large (5X6 feet) and invite the viewer to step into this oddly familiar yet utterly strange predicament of ours. The pandemic is invisible, everything around us looks deceptively unchanged but loss and uncertainty are literally in the air we breathe. When my paintings feel authentic they act as a barometer of the emotions around me.