VISIONS MAGAZINE -- ART QUARTERLY

LINDA JACOBSON At Mendenhall Gallery, Whittier College, Katya Williamson, Writer and author

Integrating, in her words, the “tangible imagery of the visible world with the emotional life of inner states,” Linda Jacobson’s paintings are filled with mythic and surrealistic apparitions. Expressing the spiritual in art through a feminist perspective, Jacobson’s works are full of imagery from personal dreams, Jungian concepts and the essence of Tibetan Buddhist meditations.

Focusing on narrative connotations rather than merely allowing spontaneous imagery to come to the surface, Jacobson’s allegiance to the Post-Surrealist School of Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg is clear. Feitelson, her professor at the Art Center College of Design and in a private mentor croup for many years, gave her insights into the “possibility of line.”

Black Path with Biomorphic Form includes the flat line compositions and modelled voluminous forms of the Post-Surrealists. The painting moves the eye down a dark corridor the place where dreams could begin. Flames and trees of black are illuminated by white orbs of light, swirling in waves. A couch-like bench of marble and a half moon stand at this gateway, their shapes – ovoid, rotund, cylindrical, strangely familiar – hinting at what one might encounter if one takes this alluring passage into the inner worlds.

In embarking on this path, Jacobson pays tribute to surrealists Masson and Savinio; to Kandinsky, for his interest in creating a metaphysical visual manifestation of the spiritual; and to Rothko for his express of spiritual consciousness. Her Pathway with Gold Mandala, a richly configured landscape with a concave, earlike orifice to one side and a milky blue rive of light denoting another passageway is a strong testament to his consciousness, and what lies within.