...." Painter Linda Arnold, known for her shimmering, luminous sea and landscapes, has executed her art in many parts of the world, including the 8,000 - foot - high cloud forests of Ecuador in the Andes Mountains, where, in the words of 19th century German poet and mountaineer Heinrich Heine, "you forgot everything but your own feet."
Meghan Candler describes Arnold as fearless and unafraid to take risks. Arnold describes herself as a plein air artist in the impressionistic tradition. From my perspective there is little traditional about her. Until they fell apart and she had to trade them in for a pair of paint-spattered sneakers, she painted in combat boots. She is edging toward abstract geometrics, a more difficult execution than representational art, while her color palette is becoming more nuanced. In addition, she has traded the rectangular canvas for the square, a shape that "forces your eye to move differently."
Arnold lives in the Upper East side of New York with her husband, Bob. She used to ride the subway to her studio in an old manufacturing plant in Long Island City, where she paints until the natural light fades. Now she opts for a cab with plexiglass shield between the driver and the passenger. Except for a brief visit to grown children in Baltimore, Arnold has remained in New York. I ask why she didn't flee, as so many did, a city considered an epicenter of contagion, where the only sound she heard was sirens. "It's where I live," she replies, "It’s where I get my energy. The tragic losses all around me make me realize how important it is to grab the moment, I can still paint. Who knows what's around the corner? "
