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Newsletter Item [ back ]
Date: 2006-09-01 15:02:52
Our Town- Painting A Memory
Prolific painter, Linda Regula, leads a life filled with art. She owned her own gallery, Signatures, in Worthington, and has served as the curator of The Works in Newark. Ms. Regula has ties to The Zanesville Art Museum and the Artists Colony of Zanesville. Linda was the only painter who participated in the Ohio Division of Travel and Tourism’s Appalachian Travel Reception. Her work has been featured at galleries and colleges. At first glance, this bright eyed, joy filled artist looks like she was born with a golden paintbrush in hand. In truth her journey was somewhat more complicated.
Born in the hills of West Virginia, one of eleven children living in a tar paper shack lacking electricity or running water, life was anything but gold plated. Her mother abandoned the family when Linda was nine, so she learned to find safety where she could. Whether under the shelter of one of the ancient trees surrounding her home, or through the stories she created in her head of an imaginary friend.
As I panted after her up the three flights of stairs to her top floor studio, it was easy to see the girl she once was roaming her native hills. The halls are lined with her paintings, brilliant fanciful jewel toned works most featuring a hopeful beam of light. I was moved by her ability to capture not just the look of what she was painting, but the mood of a moment in time. Linda paints her memories of a lonely girl dependent on the kindness of one neighbor and the protection of an imaginary friend. She paints the plight of women everywhere. A mother, her baby clutched to her chest, racing through woods, the fear and sadness in her eyes burning from the canvas. A woman bowed under the weight of the world's standard of beauty. Her studio is stacked with paintings. More canvases of the imaginary stories she entertained herself with as a child, some florals, and prominently placed next to the door, a three dimensional rendering of the tiny shack she once called home set amongst the mountains. Beautiful in its simplistic style.
"That's what people see from the outside.” she says when she catches me studying it. “Like most houses, no one ever knows what's really happening inside." Linda tells me she was the first of her family to graduate from High School, much less go on to college. She talks about how her older sister escaped their hideous family life and despite never learning to read, managed to land a job and come back for her. Linda later went back and rescued the sister beneath her.
Ms. Regula’s first foray into the art world was as prophetic as it was disastrous. Her fourth grade class was instructed to draw a picture of the radio show they’d just listened to. Hers was selected to hang in the place of honor over the radio. When the class returned from lunch, the class bully had torn her picture from the wall, crumpled it, ripped it into pieces and stomped on it.
“It’s the only time in my life I can remember being deliberately mean.” She said. “I saw my picture and got mad. I knew that he knew I was poor, and I was ugly. But he didn’t know I was fast!” She chased the miscreant out of the room and caught up with him just in time to push him down a short flight of stairs. Linda made no attempt to draw or paint anything again for more than twenty years.
A farming accident left her broken and bedridden in the living room of her home in her mid thirties. Helpless, with two small children, she was rapidly descending into depression when a friend intervened and forced her to try painting. They hung a blank canvas over the top of the bed and she tried, soon spending every day painting, and every evening getting the paint and turpentine washed off her body. By the time she'd recovered enough to move to a wheelchair, she was frustrated with her self taught efforts.
"It's like a musician who can play by ear but doesn't know the notes to write on the paper" she said. Still wheelchair bound, she enrolled in art classes at Kent State.
Today, Linda uses her art as social commentary on the issues of women and children. She teaches people to use art as an expression from her studio on the third floor of the Artists Colony of Zanesville on Elberon Street where her paintings can also be viewed by the public. In January she will have a display of fantasy art for children at the John McIntire Library.
That picture the bully destroyed? It was of a phoenix, rising from the ashes.
Born in the hills of West Virginia, one of eleven children living in a tar paper shack lacking electricity or running water, life was anything but gold plated. Her mother abandoned the family when Linda was nine, so she learned to find safety where she could. Whether under the shelter of one of the ancient trees surrounding her home, or through the stories she created in her head of an imaginary friend.
As I panted after her up the three flights of stairs to her top floor studio, it was easy to see the girl she once was roaming her native hills. The halls are lined with her paintings, brilliant fanciful jewel toned works most featuring a hopeful beam of light. I was moved by her ability to capture not just the look of what she was painting, but the mood of a moment in time. Linda paints her memories of a lonely girl dependent on the kindness of one neighbor and the protection of an imaginary friend. She paints the plight of women everywhere. A mother, her baby clutched to her chest, racing through woods, the fear and sadness in her eyes burning from the canvas. A woman bowed under the weight of the world's standard of beauty. Her studio is stacked with paintings. More canvases of the imaginary stories she entertained herself with as a child, some florals, and prominently placed next to the door, a three dimensional rendering of the tiny shack she once called home set amongst the mountains. Beautiful in its simplistic style.
"That's what people see from the outside.” she says when she catches me studying it. “Like most houses, no one ever knows what's really happening inside." Linda tells me she was the first of her family to graduate from High School, much less go on to college. She talks about how her older sister escaped their hideous family life and despite never learning to read, managed to land a job and come back for her. Linda later went back and rescued the sister beneath her.
Ms. Regula’s first foray into the art world was as prophetic as it was disastrous. Her fourth grade class was instructed to draw a picture of the radio show they’d just listened to. Hers was selected to hang in the place of honor over the radio. When the class returned from lunch, the class bully had torn her picture from the wall, crumpled it, ripped it into pieces and stomped on it.
“It’s the only time in my life I can remember being deliberately mean.” She said. “I saw my picture and got mad. I knew that he knew I was poor, and I was ugly. But he didn’t know I was fast!” She chased the miscreant out of the room and caught up with him just in time to push him down a short flight of stairs. Linda made no attempt to draw or paint anything again for more than twenty years.
A farming accident left her broken and bedridden in the living room of her home in her mid thirties. Helpless, with two small children, she was rapidly descending into depression when a friend intervened and forced her to try painting. They hung a blank canvas over the top of the bed and she tried, soon spending every day painting, and every evening getting the paint and turpentine washed off her body. By the time she'd recovered enough to move to a wheelchair, she was frustrated with her self taught efforts.
"It's like a musician who can play by ear but doesn't know the notes to write on the paper" she said. Still wheelchair bound, she enrolled in art classes at Kent State.
Today, Linda uses her art as social commentary on the issues of women and children. She teaches people to use art as an expression from her studio on the third floor of the Artists Colony of Zanesville on Elberon Street where her paintings can also be viewed by the public. In January she will have a display of fantasy art for children at the John McIntire Library.
That picture the bully destroyed? It was of a phoenix, rising from the ashes.
