Judith Linhares

Two of Linhares’s recent paintings welcome visitors upon entry to The Mill. 

“I use a lotta yellow paint. It’s a transitory moment sunset and sundown, and I think I am always thinking about THE LIGHT.”- Judith Linhares (video interview PPOW)

Rooted in the California Bay Area counterculture of the 60s and 70s, Judith Linhares (b. 1940) composes folkloric, figurative paintings from confident, abstract brushwork, utilizing broad strokes and brilliant fields of color to gradually develop her subjects. Harnessing portentous yet quotidian symbols, her uniquely irradiant paintings celebrate the female body and communal experience. Fueled by the permissive, psychedelic atmosphere of the 1960s, Linhares continues to investigate the relationship between the conscious and unconscious – her dreams often providing her work with their mythic narratives, characters, and kaleidoscopic compositions that pulsate with color.

Linhares earned her BFA and MFA degrees from California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA, among others. Judith Linhares: The Artist as Curator, an exhibition featuring five decades of work, was presented at the Sarasota Art Museum, FL, in winter 2022. The exhibition included a curated presentation of works by Bill Adams, Ellen Berkenblit, Karin Davie, Dona Nelson, and Mary Jo Vath, highlighting the longstanding influence of dialogue between artists. Linhares presented Honey in the Rock, her first solo exhibition at Massimo de Carlo, London, UK, in spring 2023. In November 2023, Linhares presented a collection of rarely seen works from the 1970s in Love Letters from San Jose, her first exhibition at Parker Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. P·P·O·W presented Linhares's third solo exhibition with the gallery in spring 2025. 

(text credit : PPOW gallery)