About

Photo: @paynalw

Linda Laino is a visual artist and writer who has been making art in one form or another for over 45 years. With an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she received two years of fellowship awards from the Virginia Museum, Laino was influenced by language from a young age, and moves between painting and writing in search of the connections and the crossover.

She has shown work regularly in solo and group exhibitions since 1988, when she was awarded a prize from The American Craft Museum in New York. Her work is included in major collections including the McDonough Museum in Ohio, and Fundación Valparaíso in Spain. In recent years, she has been making art around the world at residencies in New Mexico 2015, France 2016, Spain 2018, and most recently, Maine in 2023. In June 2024, she will travel to Greece where she was awarded a grant for a month-long stay to paint on the island of Skopelos.

Her poems and prose have been published with distinction in many small presses and anthologies, most recently in “La Presa” out of Guanajuato City. Her poem, Poem at Sixty was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. Originally from Philadelphia and Richmond, Virginia, since 2012, she has lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico where the color and flavor allow for endless inspiration.

My process of layering  images visually is similar to the way we hear sound in our daily lives. Incongruous sounds enter and exit our space without consent resulting in a tapestry of song that needs no composer. We encounter the world visually in the same way, but mostly in a blur, unconscious and un-awake. I hope to harness the stillness of the moving picture in an effort to arrest the viewer and create a vivid sense of experience. 


Residencies

I’ve been fortunate to have spent lots of time at residencies around the world in recent years. It is an incredible generosity to be given the gift of uninterrupted time in the studio, along with connections to accomplished artists and writers.

Scroll down to see a few I have attended.

Auvillar, France, 2016

Mojacar, Spain, 2018

Monson, Maine, 2023