Reception: October 22nd  5-7pm 

Lin Medlin’s Stillness and Color, a series of light filled landscapes pervaded by contemplative stillness, begins its run at Strata Gallery, Santa Fe, on October 19. The reception for the artist will be held Friday, October 22, 5 PM to 7 PM. This is the first show of Medlin’s work in Santa Fe, though many of his paintings find their subjects in New Mexico, Colorado, and the Rio Grande.

Medlin believes that the painting of landscapes can be an expression of philosophical concepts and a reflection of the inner state of the artist. He said in a recent interview: “These works make an argument about today’s world. We live, for the most part, in places filled with clamoring humanity, ever rushing forward. One way to comment on this reality is to conjure on canvas worlds where the opposite reigns: an absence of fellow humans, an insistent stillness.” 

In these paintings movement has been caught in a particular instant. Yet paradoxically, they communicate the flow of natural processes such as the movement of clouds and wind over water, and in place of humans, spirits of bright color haunt these vistas, giving them both motion and a harmonious beauty. 

Lin Medlin’s ties to the Southwest include study in Taos, and living in Moenave, Arizona, with its natural springs in a desert setting. Visits to Ireland’s West Coast on the Dingle Peninsula, and in the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia near the Russian and Dagestan borders, have given him other visions of color and dramatic terrain we see in his work.

Lin Medlin began painting landscapes when he was 15. He earned a BFA with highest honors at Southern Methodist University and worked as a Kress Foundation Fellow in art history at Oberlin College. He lives in Dallas, Texas. 

All the paintings in the show can be seen at: Lin Medlin’s Website Here.

Lin Medlin, Flaming Sky Westcliff, Oil on Linen, 30x40, 2016