Linda Chapman – Cover Artist
By Emma Taylor
Local artist Linda Chapman begins her watercolors the same way she began her path to professional artistry, by building a strong foundation.
Chapman is a fifth generation Bradentonian who comes from a long line of artists. Her creative affinity developed early, and though she initially went off to the University of Florida on an academic scholarship for English, she knew she liked art more than anything.
For two years, Chapman filled her elective slots with art courses before being able to switch to the concentration full-time in her junior year. She continued her artistic studies at the University of South Florida, obtaining her MFA in the late 1970s.
“I was very lucky to have some excellent teachers. Because it was a long time ago, we still had lots of old-school artists who really knew anatomy and the basics of everything. We made our own pastels. We really learned it from the ground up. We did everything but weave our own canvases,” Chapman said fondly of her professional training.
During Chapman’s time at USF, greats like Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, and Jim Dine walked the halls imparting their knowledge of printmaking and the national art scene as visiting artists of USF’s Graphicstudio. Chapman praised the school for immersing its students in both the study of their craft and paths to practical application. Instructors would inform students about shows in different
museums around the country where they could submit their work. It was through this thoughtful guidance that Chapman got her first “big break.”
Shortly after graduation in 1979, Chapman’s work was featured in a show in West Palm Beach. The exhibition led to a partnership with her first art dealer, Albert Goldman, and she 14 sold a piece to the Museum of Modern Art the same day. Now, over 40 years later, Chapman’s work can still be found in the MOMA, along with many other museums across the U.S.
Chapman’s husband, Jake Fernandez, is also an artist who works primarily in oil painting. The two met while matriculating at the University of Florida and have been navigating their creative careers and lives together ever since.
After graduate school in New York City, Linda and Jake moved back to Bradenton to raise their son, Ray Jay. They still travel to NYC a few times a year for business-related needs, but the work, and the lives that inspire it, are here in Florida.
Chapman occasionally paints in oil, but it’s her preference for watercolor that leads her to consider herself more of a draftsman than a painter. For her watercolor pieces, she meticulously sketches out the body of each piece and slowly builds form and depth by delicately layering her translucent tints. The resulting images are often bold and sharp and seem to cleverly disguise her tedious process.
“People that paint with oil can do a very general kind of thing and give more and more detail, but it’s opaque. You can make a mistake and slap some paint on top of it. You can start over. I don’t have that, but my direction is clear to me. I can see my original drawing all the way through to the end. Really, you can sit in front of an oil painting for the rest of your life and fiddle with it. With watercolor, what’s done is done,” she said of her process.
Chapman has used her art to portray all kinds of subjects. She’s worked extensively with animals. She painted her son’s childhood rabbit, Flipper, in a red dress, and a bear in a kilt displaying the commissioner’s family tartan. She has created more traditional portraits like those she did for the board of directors at Moffitt Cancer Center
Chapman also often chooses to render collections of stationary items that nonetheless illustrate vibrancy in their depiction—a type of painting known as still life. She derives a lot of inspiration from fairytales, despite the commonplace nature of certain elements when viewed singularly in reality. Color, lighting, and compositions converge in fantastical tableaus that seem to beckon the viewer into another world.
“Still life is like telling a story. You have an object, and an object, and another object, and you look at it and say, ‘Well, what does this mean? What are these from?’ I have about three, maybe four, generations of antiques in this house and they all have a story,” she said of some of her beloved subjects.
If one considers the similarity of some of Chapman’s chosen content to the symbolism found in traditional Vanitas paintings—objects like fruit, flowers, mirrors, and candles that were once meant to signify the ephemerality of life—it seems she’s spent years honing her ability to render objects that signify transience through a transparent medium by a method of unforgiving permanence. These little contrarian touches that punctuate much of Chapman’s work are just a microcosm of what makes it so interesting.
The influence of the work of some of her treasured muses like Lewis Carroll and Beatrix Potter can be felt rather than seen. Chapman seems to have a similar way of absorbing her surroundings and translating them back to the viewer in a way that’s exciting and entirely original in its beautiful peculiarity.
But it’s not just Chapman’s artwork that’s imbued with whimsy, it’s her life. She likes to listen to audio books and interesting music to help transport her while she works. Her “white wolf” German Shepard, Arthur, follows her around her 100-year-old house like some kind of anthropomorphic artist’s assistant. Everything feels alive in Linda Chapman’s world. She sees the magic, vitality, and history in the ordinary, and has the talent to show it to you too.
Chapman occasionally takes commissions and was happy to oblige when BMag Editor-in-Chief, Paula Wright, asked her to put her dreamy style on a local holiday theme.
To view more of Chapman’s work, and for a list of museums, galleries, and art books that feature her pieces, please visit her website, www.lindachapmanart.com or her Facebook page, Linda Chapman Artist.
