Lin Price spoke at Axom in the South Wedge, Rochester, New York
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Last Saturday night I heard a very inspiring talk given by Lin Price at Axom in the South Wedge. Lin Price is a painter and I had seen some of her artwork in shows at Axom and also at Corners Gallery in Ithaca, New York. Now on at Axom, there is a fine show of her paintings through mid-January 2025. Her show is called "Inside Out", and she had the opportunity to introduce an audience to her methods and themes that one would find in her artwork on the walls of the gallery.
"Willow Run", oil on board by Lin Price
Landscape is a major theme, and Lin Price treats it almost as a metaphor. In fact, as I listened to her talk, it brought to mind a kind of poetry, a visual way of speaking about emotions and the passage of time in a physical setting that one can see. These are the kinds of things that can happen when a painter is in a landscape and is trying to communicate what the landscape represents to her. This is not a kind of photo-realism that some might expect.
"John Laurie's Field by Lin Price
The painting above with a field ( a corn crop ) is one that Lin spoke about as a kind of memory of a real place she visited as a youngster. Other paintings have an inside-out quality that Lin describes in her artist statement, and she writes that she looks for a sense of intimacy in each invented space. A set of paintings like the one featured on her invitation card give a viewer a feeling of looking out from an enclosed space which could be her home, and off into a more realistic landscape. This effect is achieved by taking studies made en plein air and attaching them to a larger surface, creating a painting around painting!
"Inside Out" paintings by Lin Price at Axom, Rochester, NY
Other paintings like "Willow Run" also have a story to tell. I was thinking of the image and it brought to mind a quote from baseball player Yogi Berra who remarked when faced with a fork in the road: "Take It".
Yes, this painting has a fork in the road, but the story is much more telling...like why is there a sailing ship on the snowy horizon? One of the tiny houses on the right side looks like it is on fire, and what is the story there? Lin reveals the details in her conversation and it is unsettling to say the least!
Yes, it was a really quite a nice way to be introduced to an artist's inner voice, expressed through her imagery, so I can recommend that you go out and see these paintings for yourself!
