Linda Karshan - CSMBR

Linda Karshan

Linda Karshan is 2022 Artist in Residence

Guided by what she calls her “inner choreography,” Linda Karshan makes spare, monochromatic, abstract prints and drawings that serve as direct reflections of the process of their making. Though she began her career producing expressive compositions, in 1994 she developed a performance-based method for making work, in which every mark is associated with her rhythmic and regulated breathing, her counter-clockwise turning of the paper, the motion of her entire body, and the musical way in which she counts off increments of time. Based on her studies of psychology and Plato’s theory that the universe is ordered numerically, Karshan’s method results in iterative images of intersecting lines, forming grids, geometric shapes and patterns, and, sometimes, ordered yet loosely scribbled marks repeating across the page.

Karshan’s drawings, prints and artist’s books are held in public and private collections, including in the UK: The British Library, The British Museum, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Tate Modern, The Arts Council Collection – all in London, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, Middlesbrough Musuem of Modern Art (MIMA), Middlesbrough, England; in the US: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; The Morgan Library, New York, NY; and a suite of thirteen prints have been recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.