Standing Wave (love heals) #1, 2020
Graphite, colored pencil and lipstick on paper
Unframed: 12 x 12 inches
Framed: 12 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches

Courtesy of the Artist and Ortuzar, New York

Linda Stark makes talismanic paintings and works on paper in which psychic symbols, popular culture, personal mythologies, and feminist conceptions of the body converge in forms that are at once polyphonic and precise. Her practice of transfiguration is marked by an almost spiritual devotion to process: she meticulously builds her canvases through layers of oil paint, while her works on paper incorporate pencil, lipstick, piercings, and chance drips of paint.Stark’s sustained engagement with material invites a similarly patient and attentive form of spectatorship, resulting in a body of work that is deeply auratic, emotionally charged, and richly layered.

Stark lives and works in Los Angeles. She has recently exhibited solo projects at Ortuzar, New York (2024); David Kordansky, Los Angeles (2020); Jenny’s, Los Angeles (2017); and Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California (2013). Recent group exhibitions include “Ordinary Extraordinary,” Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California (2024); “New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century,” Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California (2021–2022); “Made in L.A. 2018,” Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); “Painting: Now and Forever, Part III,” Matthew Marks Gallery and Greene Naftali, New York (2018); and “Forms of Identity: Women Artists in the 90s,” Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California (2017). Her work is in the public collections of the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California; Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California; and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford,Connecticut.

Selected by Jenny Borland