Seeing Things in a New Light
Making art, for me, is a way of life – a way of connecting with my senses, connecting with others and making sense of my experience. I listen with my eyes and make tangible the act of looking, touching and bearing witness to what I perceive. Simply calling attention to what is revealed through the interaction of light and form has the potential to transform perception, just as focused attention has the potential to transform thought. Over time, images, words, sounds and artifacts from daily life are reworked in my camera and studio. The resulting artwork is a celebration of the act of looking and wondering about what is revealed.
My approach to making art is fluid, ephemeral and rigorous. Grounded in traditions of drawing, painting, performance art and photography my work also owes a great deal to my study of psychology, culture and art history. Playing with light and shadow, color, line, shape, metaphor, repetition and change, surface tension and rupture, mystery and recognition form the basis of my visual language. My artistic aim is to enhance perception, awaken the apperception of ordinary beauty and inspire curiosity about the healing potential of art and the creative process.
I see forces of nature and culture as intimately and reciprocally related. The Farm River flows in both directions outside my Branford, CT studio. It is my muse, providing sensual, aesthetic, formal and metaphoric sustenance. I trace its lines, surfaces and movement with endless fascination for what might be found, lost and rediscovered there. This watery landscape is both me and not me. The river provides an endless flow of material that informs the content and form of my art. Unlike the grids and angles of the built environment, lines in nature are rarely straight – they wander, tighten, relax, move, thicken disappear and reappear in unexpected places.
Borderlines, both in nature and culture, beckon me. At the intersection between forces, I feel most alive, aware of contrasts, movement and the potential for transformative action. The artwork is the landing place – the ultimate form my yearning for contact with beauty and wonder takes me. The artwork provides a visual edge, like a spatial or cultural edge, that separates and connects, clarifies and questions what is visible and invisible, knowable and unknown. An artwork holds the power to resolve what may not be possible to resolve in life. Art has the capacity to evoke feelings that may be otherwise imperceptible. I find joy in the capacity to awaken a moment of recognition through artwork that stimulates the viewer’s imagination and capacity to wonder.
—Linda Cummings, 2025