Linda Wallis
Linda Wallis is a Nottingham, UK-based artist working primarily in coloured pencils. With a love of form and a sense of the bizarre, her drawings teeter between the plausible and the ridiculous; a strange array of objects and shapes that appear to depict something tangible. In 2017 Linda made a dramatic break from painting city and townscapes to focus on what she believes are manifestations of her unconscious. By reappropriating pattern, form, shape and texture from every-day and ordinary things, she brings to life an eccentric array of mischievous constructions on paper. Linda’s work is held in private collections in the United States, China, Ireland, Tasmania, the Netherlands and United Kingdom.
My current work and ideas have developed around the theme of the unconscious. In 2017 I began a series of small drawings influenced by automatism. Having used coloured pencils when I was a child, the rediscovery of this medium at this time was ideal as it enabled a more playful and immediate approach to my process. To define my work is a challenge as the unconscious is, by its very nature, intangible. Although themes are constantly changing, many pieces reference unconscious and conscious preoccupations such as entrapment, exposure and expulsion. The creative process of is one of subduing, as much as possible, any intentional thought. The drawings and paintings are freely reproduced on paper whilst focusing on a movie, documentary or even a quiz show, thus if my mind is occupied, my imagination is free to express itself. This unconventional working practice creates a direct route from the unconscious to the hand; the intention of which is to wrongfoot the viewer into feeling both a sense of the familiar and unfamiliar. Being a psychology graduate, it is perhaps unsurprising that I am preoccupied with ideas of memory, perception and what makes things recognisable. It is this tension between reality and surreal abstraction on which the basis of my work focuses.
