The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond, to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. A listing in the OAR does not confer an endorsement, approval, or verification by the Ohio Arts Council.
For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.
2024 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Linda Hutchinson
HutchinsonKENT OH 44240-6812 United States Home Phone: 3306733884 Website: Linda Hutchinson
Bio
I have been making art for the better part of my life, originally in the greeting card and home decor markets, and currently through drawing and painting. I work in watercolor, oil and all drawing mediums and often experiment with mixed media applications. My work starts with realistic imagery that is altered by design elements and principles using a create::destroy method. I am moved by value, rhythm and mood. Working in more than one medium helps me to move all over the keyboard, painting loud passages, as well as the soft. The various mediums help to inform each other and allow me to always be present in the process. I love novelty. I do not wish to establish a formula. I love problem-solving and often a session with outrageous over-passages that create other new problems for the next day’s session. Because I studied calligraphy intensively for many years, the stroke has become so important in my work. Saying things minimally is my goal.
Major awards include: Juror’s Choice award in the OOVAR Exhibition at the Columbus Metropolitan Library in 2018 and 2020; The Ohio Watercolor Society Gold Medal in 2001; First Night Akron button artist in 2008 and twice the recipient of The Kaleidoscope Award at Summit Artspace in Akron, Ohio. Collections include: The Ohio Watercolor Society; Parkersburg Art Center (WV); and The State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio.
Selected Group Exhibitions include: The Adirondacks National Exhibition of American Watercolors; The Butler Institute of American Art; California Watercolor Association; The National Watercolor Society; Oil Painters of America; The Pastel Society of America; and The Salmagundi Open.
My work has been awarded a finalist three times by juror Janie Gallizia in competitions sponsored by The Art of Watercolour magazine (Paris) and was the focus of an article in the March 2017 edition.
My work is represented by: Hudson Art and Framing (Hudson, OH); The Sharon Weiss Gallery (Columbus, OH) and Gallery C (Raleigh, NC),
I hold a B.A. in French from Miami University.
Artist Statement
Quite simply, I adore pigment: the loose and liquid quality of watercolor, the thick creaminess of oils and the dark graphic nature of charcoal. I love both transparency and opacity. I love key notes of pure sparkling color as well as areas of non-descriptive grays where layers of color speak a softer language. I love line and mass; spontaneity and deliberation; the real and the imagined – all paired opposites. My process involves a quest for harmony through the balancing of these opposing forces and can best be described as “create and destroy”. Self-exploration and investigation into the “gray areas” that describe the contradictions we all face have been paramount to my own personal and spiritual growth.
Strong values, movement and expressive stroke-making are important to me. I attempt to resist “right” and “wrong” notions in my work, chasing, instead, the rhythm of the moment. I work at distilling life into its “simple essences”, its absolutes. My preferred subjects are human faces and figures, as well as aging architectural elements, those subjects that, to me, have underlying hidden qualities. I love the lyrical.
I have learned to paint by painting. However, I feel that my work has followed a natural evolution of serious introspection that reflects earlier studies in music, dance, language, and the observation of human behavior. Through these reflections, my work draws on rhythm, movement, attention to detail, spontaneity and simplification of form, descriptions that are both apt and contradictory. My work has evolved into painting because of my own disappointment in words, which are often excessive, elusive and loaded with a multitude of meanings dependent upon delivery. As honest verbal communication with another person is so rare, I have turned instead to a visual form of communication which, to me is almost pure, and and certainly more honest. I am intrigued by human behavior and seek to unearth that which lies beneath the surface, sometimes a sublime gesture, a memory, a visual metaphor…often contradictions, a truth for which there are no words. I am searching for something soulful, something noble, something archetypical. Perhaps the very nature of the human condition makes that impossible.
My work is a product of non-conceptualization where I try to clear my mind of the intellectual and move to the Zen state of mushin (no mind). From this state I believe that I am more able to attain a connection to things directly and positively. My work focuses on what it means to be human, as well as a connection to our life on this earth, which is antithetical to the pervasive and complex technology-and consumption-driven culture that we live in. I want my viewers to feel emotion, to feel human, with all of its imperfection.
