Linda Arts
Beneden-Leeuwen (the Netherlands), 1971
The works of Linda Arts (1971) consist, apart from paintings and graphic arts, of light objects and murals, which she creates on location. Characteristic is the usage of black and white, with a sporadical accent of colour. Her work seems matter-of-fact, but is -at a closer glance- surprisingly personal: ‘I am a minimalist of the subtle romantic kind.’
Through the rhythmic sequence of white and black, the game of light and dark, Arts works seem to be optical illusions. However, her working method is –as she states- most of all a call to look more closely. Arts is looking for ‘the space within the rhythm’, without losing sight of the stillness and simplicity, that she aims for. Equally the creation process, the almost meditative way of applying layer on layer, she wants to make comprehensible, preferably palpable. According to Arts, everything can be reduced to looking and seeing, experiencing and thinking.
Linda Arts was born in ‘The country of Maas and Waal’, but has been living and working in Tilburg for years. ‘Despite the fact that the choices I make within my work originate from the work itself, the basis underneath it all is my connection with the shades of grey of the archetypical Dutch river landscape. It’s as if I’m recording the fog of my youth again and again.’ What applied to the artists of De Stijl at that time, applies to Arts as well; not nature but the work itself is the basic principle.
The unambiguous motives, the tendency towards light, the choice for clarity and the interplay of lines of art movement De Stijl are to Arts a source of inspiration for developing a powerful personal imagery. De Stijl has strengthened her, as she claims, to use minimal means in black/white, even though this was absolutely not done in her starting days. For her as well, the choice of sobriety, peacefulness and rhythm are basic principles in her work, but in contrast to the artists of De Stijl, Arts does not want to be ‘absent’.
Linda Arts is active at home and abroad. She has exhibited i.a. in Sydney, New York, Paris, Berlin and Aachen. In the Netherlands her work could be seen in Museum De Pont in Tilburg, Museum van Bommel van Dam in Venlo and Museum Waterland in Purmerend. Besides being an artist, Arts is active as a curator.
