Linda Boylan explores the nature of pattern, lines and forms in space, reconfiguring geometric and organic shapes, engaging her eye for detail without losing sight of the whole.  Boylan draws viewers into the structure of her paintings, interlacing traces of her working process with memory.  She begins quite intuitively, introducing color to the canvas, trusting that, early on, anything she does will contribute to the process.  Then she builds surfaces, reconfigures drips, renews patterns, exposes and enhances layers of pigment and collage elements.  Her practice of scraping or sanding back through applications of disparate materials suspended in layers of paint activates Boylan’s compositions.  It instills them with a history suggesting the passage of time, enriching the visual density of the final result.

Boylan courts complexity through her willingness to expand her facility to work with a variety of media.  She relishes dipping into her treasury of papers, pattern books, drawings and hand carved wooden and rubber printing blocks.  Her richly burnished encaustics contrast in scale and surface quality with her more delicate paper collage or grid-like block printed paintings.  However, the artist’s sensitivity for color and marvelous capacity to capture arrested movement beneath layers of materials identifies all of the work in diverse media as uniquely hers.

Through the incorporation of cross-cultural decorative elements, Boylan avoids the citing of specific locales to her work.  She encourages the viewer to bring their own interpretation and history to the reading of her paintings.  However, some of the compositions, like those in the blanket series, have titles, colors or patterned details that suggest a certain earthiness of appreciation of things organic.

Diane Calder
International Association of Art Critics