Red Crow Interview with Linda Galusha

Name: Linda Galusha
Occupation: Artist
Location: Davis, CA

How did you first become interested in making Art?
I have memories of making things from about the age of six or seven. I have memories from then on of varied experiences of being considered 'gifted'. There were teachers in grade school who would take me aside and have me do the sample piece for the class art project. I could draw very well at a very early age and seemed to have a natural sense of space, I did not have the language to know of what I was doing until I attended classes in Form and Composition in Junior College. Then of course creating things only got more complex and seductive. I guess it could be said that within my earliest memory to now, that I have always been attempting to respond as best as I could to those 'how and what if' questions that come to me. So the answer for me is a stroll through my memories, always.

What are your artistic influences?
My artistic influences have varied over the years and are in continuous review. I pull them up when needed for whatever project I'm working on. Lately that is what I have been doing, pulling up my past ways of doing things and layering with my present visual concerns (which seem to be in a rapid state of flux lately). So anything that communicates the mystery that inspires a question, that holds me long after the encounter is probably an automatic an integrated influence. Influences are ongoing.

What have you used/learned from another artist lately?
About 4 or 5 months ago I had one of the most complete 'art' experiences that I can say that I have had in a long time. A friend of mine and I attended the Louise Nevelson show at SFMOMA. I am still feeling the awe of the presence that her installations held for me. I am still processing that experience in seeing how essential editing is and how simplicity and complexity can occupy the same place.

What are you trying to communicate with your art?
The truth of simplicity and complexity, the truth of the parts of a finished piece as well as the whole, the truth of the story within the piece, the truth of the process to reveal the piece, the truth that the one who witnesses the piece receives within themselves.


Many of your paintings are done on old fence boards or dismantled buildings pieces. How did this come about?
I have been intrigued, probably forever, with what happens when the context is changed for a thing, or a person or what ever and how it can be almost not recognized. I also am drawn to things that can 'wear their history' in such a way as to almost retrieve their original form. Painting or drawing trees on these antique boards is a way to comment on this cycle that I see.


Quite a few visitors have commented on how much they like the Old Wood Old Wood series. I enjoy the simple composition and repetition both in the artwork and the title. Would you tell us the story behind these two antique panels?
Those two panels actually are my most recent pieces in drawing on the old boards. The panels themselves came from an old building in Winters, CA that was converted to an art gallery (Briggs and Company) where I also show. I have been working on this paneled surface for about a year now, drawing mostly crow imagery with graphite sticks. I had one of those 'what if' moments to see just how detailed of a drawing these boards could support. Trees keep it simple for me because of the cycle that is represented with the discarded boards. And old trees on old boards, they practically draw themselves.

Trees and Branches are found in most of the work we have here at the shop. Do they symbolize something for you or do you just enjoy drawing them?
I just enjoy drawing them. They are some of the first images that I made as a small child. I have learned and continue to learn a lot about drawing from trees.

You are known in the central valley for your mural work, what have you learned from large-scale painting that you apply to smaller works?
I have learned that size is an illusion revealed by the viewer's perspective relative to space. Scale and/or size are elements or tools in the composition of a 5 story mural as they are in a 5x5 oil painting. An artist has to know his tools fully to create comprehensively.

You describe yourself as a mixed-media artist. What are your favorite mediums?
It seems lately that my favorite mediums are the ones I can mix. Graphite, acrylics, colored pencils, conte, water colors, gosh it goes on and on, but the other part of it is the surfaces that the mediums can be applied to or challenged to that need to be accounted for. It is the phenomena of resistance in making a mark that has me intrigued.

What inspires you most of all?
That all my challenges are opportunities to do my best. I'm doing my best to keep this in mind everyday and be grateful that I recognize it. And also all the old fairy tales that I read as a child.

In 5 words or less, tell us what wee can expect from you in the future.
More questing than answers.


And our completely RANDOM question to end it all: In honor of our upcoming poetry readings what is your favorite poem of all time?

I don't currently have a favorite poem but came across a small quote by a favorite artist of mine, Marcel Duchamp. " I have bee forced to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste."