Painted in minute detail in shades of burnt umber and white, David Linn's engrossing panels could be mistaken for sepia photographs, were the imagery not so mystical. In most of the paintings on view here (all 2003), Linn focused on a single figure: a haloed pilgrim (or "everyman") draped in white fabric from the waist down and caught in the midst of a deeply solitary journey. The settings are barren cliffs and deserts, where the man sleeps, offers supplication to the skies, and peers into the abyss. Sometimes, as in The Gift, he is pictured twice, perhaps a representation of the multiple states of the unconscious or a reference to a spiritual relationship. Every element in these paintings is charged with symbolism. A dead branch, a cloud, and a single, backlit curtain dropped from the sky onto a rock pile were particularly effective. It is difficult to look at The Fear, in which the loose end of the man's garment drops into a hole in the ground, or Lamentation, where his clothing is caught on a branch, without feeling a sense of foreboding. Linn's unpeopled landscapes picturing plumes of smoke rising from water and vast, burnt rock fields are especially apocalyptic. In the past two years, the 44 year-old, Utah-based Linn has been featured in nine museum exhibitions. The potency of his work and its spiritual intensity place him comfortably in the lofty company of the Symbolist painters of the 19th century. -Dottie Indyke
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