In the Parsons Gallery, David Linn, from Elk Ridge, Utah, shares events and images that have stirred his own spiritual growth. Although he describes his technique as fairly conventional, his works have a technical quality that reaches past the brushstroke to link the viewer directly with the subject of the work. The luminescent quality of his work, which is essentially monochromatic, is created by the function and textures of the paints he uses, his judicious use of glazing, and the subtle finish. All of the work in the exhibit was painted with burnt umber (using different brands to achieve degrees of warm and cool) and white. "Sometimes I prefer a silvery brown much like the effect achieved in early photographic platinum prints," he said. "Other pieces tend toward warmer tones." Although he has a master's degree in painting, Linn never had formal classes in how to paint. "By the time I began my undergraduate work, I had already spent years working in oils and watercolors, and had made innumerable mistakes." At an early age, he studied Renaissance and Baroque masters, who became his teachers as he tried to emulate their technique. "I was an art nerd. I spent much of my youth pouring over books and visiting museums." Over time, his trial-and-error pattern of learning led him to his own forms of expression. "My work is born out of a need to articulate for myself the terrain of my own passage through mortality- to explore the events and implications of a spiritual existence and journey that form deep currents flowing beneath the observable world," he said. Yet many of the images represented in his works are variations of places and objects he has seen while mountain climbing or backpacking, activities that have helped him strengthen his own spirituality. Spirituality made tangible is what may be experienced Linn's exhibit. He has striven to provide a window and an invitation into his own world as a way to help viewers find their own windows and spiritual connections.
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