Linda Langhorst
Columbus, OH
Linda Langhorst's portraits of the musical experience are painted while immersed in a musical community.
MessageLinda Langhorst paints the places where people gather: the nooks and crannies of musical towns, bustling cities, farmer’s markets, waterways, and park lands. Ms. Langhorst works primarily in oil, weaving strokes of color into some generally recognizable and personally satisfying memory of life around her. Perhaps best known for her body of work celebrating the Blues Highway and American musical heritage, Langhorst’s cityscapes and landscapes chronicle travels in the American heartland.
A 2019 trip to Zion National Park inspired Langhorst to (humbly) revisit landscape painting. Overwhelmed by the beauty of Zion, Linda dedicated her recent painting efforts to images of National Parks she has visited over the years. The National Parks series will be on exhibit at Sharon Weiss Gallery in Columbus, June 2023.
Following the Zion show, Langhorst plans to return to studying NOLA, the Mississippi Delta and the Blues Highway. Her next goal includes publishing a book about the region featuring paintings and writings from the perspective of a visual artist and musician (Langhorst plays piano and banjo) - a tourist's view of the land where truly American music was born.
Once a full time painter, Ms. Langhorst now splits her time between painting, helping to run a family music store, and teaching beginners the joy of banjo. She is also the illustrator of a recently published Banjo Solo Book authored by Gary Puckett (Home Grown Banjo Book, available on Amazon). Additional paintings can be found at Sharon Weiss Gallery (Short North), Pierre Paul Gallery (Ann Arbor) and Guitar House Workshop (Grandview).
Statement
My work is grounded in reality; Viewers can usually recognize the stuff that’s on my canvas. Early on, the subject of my work was about the people, the places and things themselves. Now I like to think that my work is more about the relationships that people and places and things share with each other. My is often how people express their attachments: their hands, the tilt of their heads, the way they hold themselves in relation to others nearby. These “portraits of relationship” have evolved into casual scenes that often include a musical theme.
Making music is like magic to me. I watch musicians pass the melody back and forth like a gift they offer up to one another. I see them catch each other’s glances, smiles and nods - subtle acknowledgements of the shared experience. And I am aware how different this is from my own work, which seems so much more private in nature. But I’m learning about the things musicians and painters have in common too. We are both playing with rhythm and harmony and color, following some little thread of an idea with the hope of building an effective composition, trying to communicate a feeling from inside the confines of our mediums. I feel so lucky to be able to work side by side with friends who share the same creative pull. We can’t help but do this stuff, whether it makes sense or not.
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