Oil Paintings By Linda Mann

Linda Mann’s dramatic still-life paintings evoke an ordered, stylized reality. Mann paints with an understanding of how people see and know the world, not by recording every detail, as a camera or computer would, but rather by observing the essential, and editing out the unimportant and distracting. 

Working exclusively from life with no reference to photographs, she observes the ephemeral effects of light and how they appear to the human eye, recreating the experience in oil paint. Through her selective and heightened focus and dramatic lighting, everyday objects are imbued with weight and meaning. In unstable times, it is valuable to step back and be reminded that despite chaos, the world is still understandable and beautiful.

Linda Mann lives and works in Bellevue, Washington. Mann studied at the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle and The Academy of Art College in San Francisco. She has been painting for three decades and has had solo exhibitions at the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue and Quent Cordair Fine Art in Jackson, Wyoming, and Napa, California. 

Mann has been selected Associate Living Master by the Artist Renewal Center as well as a Finalist in their 2019, 2020, and 2021 International Salons.

I’m interested in creating perfect little worlds in oil paint. I begin by

arranging objects with care, considering their colors, shapes, and the

spaces between them until the composition becomes a place I long to

inhabit. As I paint, I work to capture not only the precise forms, textures,

and hues of each object, but also the light that moves across them. In this

way, I bring my image of a perfect world into reality.

I paint exclusively from life, which allows me to see and convey the

subtleties of light, form, and color as they truly are. Each still life is rooted

in a particular season and time of day, where natural and artificial light

combine in deliberate balance. Over many months, the painting slowly

takes shape through a meticulous process of detailed drawing, preliminary

studies, and countless layers of paint and glazes, building depth and

luminosity.

For over 35 years, I have sustained a coherent visual vocabulary while

continually refining my technique. Sharing that process has long been part

of my practice—first through my blog, active for more than three decades,

and more recently with an audience of over 180,000 on Instagram. Across

these platforms, I teach the methods and principles behind my work,

encouraging others to develop their own artistic voices. Yet above all, the

studio remains at the center of what I do, where each painting becomes an

exploration of light, form, and a perfect world of its own.