Linda Hains, "Heart Mirror" - El Paso, TX

I began painting as a child - coloring everything in sight. I went through coloring books,crayons ans water colors as fast as could be. As i grew older the world came more into my awareness. I continued to create as much as i could all the time - just whatever came into mind. Creativity, for me, is the world in motion. I always work from imagination. I have worked in choreography (dance), drawing, painting and sculpture. I am very interested in movement, color, placement and form. The image are kinetic, something visual in the mind, a motion that falls into time. My Sculptures and Dances needed drawings, both are three dimensional forms on a flat surface - one an illustration, one a diagram. The diagrams became ritualistic. I was drawn to the act of creating art - letting to hand flow forward. Drawing became the fastest way to capture the ideas. I combined the ideas involved in the making of Sand paintings and Yantra's and the paintings of Jackson Pollack and CY Twombly. At one point the marks i was required a form or shape to surround them. I proceeded to place myself on the paper and used the tracing of my body as a basis for the drawing. This very act seemed to meld all the different facets of creating into one. Drawing, Movement and Sculpture consolidated itself into the form of Painting. working mostly on the floor, I use the square format as a dance space. I place my body in the square and feel the movement wander. I am very interested in improvisation, the surprise of letting the motion go through my body mind and out onto the canvas. Everything is spur of the moment, related to energy, time, season, spirit and the Joy of making marks. Being physically involved with the work is very important. Dance is a good form of communication because it is instant. You are taken through it visually and abstractly. Latter it because it becomes a memory, like a dream. I enjoy the feeling of movement on the body, the feeling of being alive and having strong sensations. I imagine myself as a slight ball of energy dancing on the earth. I work at portraying this - not just the image but the sensation. Floating feelings, Heavy feelings, Falling feelings, Light feelings and Swirling feelings - My work stems from these sensations mingling with each other. The painting are named as actions; shift Lost, Stop Shock. They describe movement, actions, emotion and sensations both mentally and visually.