LINDA PACKARD: POEMS I MEANT TO WRITE
January 19 - May 3, 2024

Maine-based artist Linda Packard has created a new body of abstract paintings for the Zillman Art Museum’s exhibition Poems I Meant to Write. The show features large-scale works that measure up to six feet—the artist’s largest paintings to date. While the works are non-objective, Packard states that she “remains strongly informed by her many years as a plein air landscape painter,” and that she, “continues to be drawn to the same organic shapes, rich textures, and earthy palette.”

Packard’s gestural movements around the canvases are intuitive, her brushstrokes varied and sensitive. The paintings highlight the physical properties of oil paint as rich surfaces emerge through a series of layers and revision. The artist also uses pigment sticks, charcoal, crayon pencils and graphite to diversify the texture and quality of her marks.

In line with the expressive spirit of earlier Abstract Expressionist painters, Packard’s works convey both energy and mood. By combining well-defined marks that seem to hover atop other thin, veil-like passages, she has created implied environments that give the illusion of deep space. Upstairs by the China Lamp, with its palette of crimson tones and glimmers of peachy-orange, has a fiery intensity; while vivid blues combine with grayed undertones to evoke atmospheric associations in When Hope Was Returned to Me.

This exhibition is funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, and a grant from the City of Bangor Commission on Cultural Development.

Image: Linda Packard, Upstairs By The China Lamp, 2023, Oil on canvas, Courtesy of the artist