The Exhibition: North Haven Gardens Gallery

It is an amazing feeling to walk through a gallery where you are showing your art. It is almost like being a silent ghost, no one recognizes you nor realizes you're the artist but they talk about the art as if in your absence. It is a very enlightening experience because you create what you hope will affect a viewer in some way but you can never estimate how your work will be received.

I hear people that are attracted by a place, somewhere in their childhood that they remember. This is the essence of my craft, to evoke an emotion in someone, not that they just enjoy the painting and walk away but that there is some sort of memory or information that they can devour from viewing the painting.

It is my opinion that the magic of art is making someone feel something from an inanimate object that is often not even representative of the feeling they experience. Someone at the show mentioned, they liked the darkness in my work and I would have thought that the darkness was so intangible no one would take that from viewing them. 

Most of my work stems from an emotion, a place of beauty which to me is often sad. It is the fragile state of that beauty and the fleeting sense of time that brings me back to that sadness. Some of my paintings have a hidden sense of loneliness or silent despair-nothing obvious, it's just that depending on what was happening during those moments I was painting anything happy, sad, lonely or reflective I hope would have been secretly infused into the colors and textures of the canvas.

Swallows and Passionvines is one painting that people have had an interest in, this painting was started in one year and during a feeling of being in transition just stopped dead for the next year or so.

When I returned to the painting, the work was fast and furious and I felt as if it were a celebration of my love of gardening-(passion vines) and my love of nature. 

The Sunset and Swallows was during a period where my grandmother passed away, the tone is a bit more pensive, the storm pending in the distance with a brilliant sunset filling the scene. What I liked most was how the swallows in the foreground interact as if you've caught a moment. I was inspired by the swallows that nest at a family home near lake Ray Hubbard. The third in the series is on its way-it is called the celebration and it is a swarm of swallows as the lake finally returned to its glory-in the spring of 

2015 after a long drought.

It is exciting to see your paintings actually interacting with people. It is like introducing your children to a new neighborhood with hopes that they will be well received. It is wonderful meeting new people and sharing why I painted the work and where I travelled during the process. 

I explained to someone about me using the name Gordon-why not Steve, or Linebaugh- at first I said because it was short and easy-the response was a still a bit confusing...what made more sense is that it was my grandfathers' name was an artist as well and with the name Gordon I honor his memory.

It's amazing the things you learn, the wonderful people you meet and the satisfaction you feel when your art has finally broke out of the safety of the studio and met a real audience. I am already planning for the Plein Air-paint Rowlett art show in October. 

My work will be at the North Haven Gardens until September so please stop by and check them out if you get a chance-its a wonderful place to visit to buy plants, learn about organic gardening and enjoy art. Let me know if you get a chance to stop by. Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for your support.