Artist Statement

Things Fall Apart Series (2006-2008)

In this series, I explore the nature of causality by focusing on the intersection of what is planned and what happens accidentally in human experience. Upon seeing a large piece of broken glass in an alley, I was taken aback by the beauty created by this accident. The shards reminded me of glaciers breaking apart, and I began thinking about what is created by accident and what is calculated in the world and in life. Are the two forces of the accidental and willed action part of an overall chaotic design or entropy?

In The Web of Life, Fritjof Capra writes that the emerging unified theory of living systems speaks of self-organizing systems, where the spontaneous emergence of new structures and new forms of behavior in open systems is far from equilibrium. Perhaps then there are no accidents, but rather occurrences or happenings following rules and systems we don?t quite understand.

My work uses abstract images and landscapes under transformation to create visual metaphors. I do not believe this expresses a pessimistic view of the world, for even in destruction there is the hope for new beginnings. It is the destruction that leaves room for the new. I break the glass to open the mind to possibility and conjecture. The sky, water, and land represented underneath are disrupted by the shattering of the glass, which represents the fragility of the world in which we live. This alters our sense of place. Thus, the conversation begins.

 Education

2006 Mentorship with Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison for the LA and the Rising Waters exhibition
2006 BFA Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA
2001 Studies Summer painting workshop, Assisi, Italy
1998 Studies Summer painting workshop, Canisy, France
1997-2002 Studies Brentwood Art Center, Brentwood, CA
1994-2001 Studies Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Docent Council
1976 MS DePaul University, Chicago, IL
1971 BA University of Illinois, Urbana

Bio

Linda Kunik was born in Chicago, IL and in 1978 moved to Beverly Hills, CA, where she currently resides. Although she initially earned a BA in Spanish Education and Psychology from the University of Illinois and later received an MS in Reading and Learning Disabilities from DePaul University, it was her seven years as an art docent for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that inspired her to become an artist.

Studying painting and drawing at the Brentwood Art Center led to two summer painting workshops in France and Italy. o further her education, she then obtained a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design.

Kunik’s earlier training as a watercolorist and landscape painter was replaced by a more conceptual approach to painting at Otis. Her thinking began to address issues of globalization and ecology. The first body of abstract paintings she developed dealt with the environment, specifically the deforestation of rain forests. It was within this body of work that she began to push the boundaries of preconceived notions of painting while attempting to reconcile abstraction with social and political issues.

Her Deforestation and the Land Series led to paintings about global warming and imbalances within ocean plant life. As her work progressed, Kunik started to see a broader picture of causality. She questioned how and why things happen in the environment, society, governments and everything we do. The Things Fall Apart Series has thus far reflected these conceptual issues, and she is now beginning to expand her ideas into a new body of work including paintings, photographs and installations.

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