Linda Calvert Jacobson: Wildflower Artist

Realism is not the only way to depict the beauty of flowers. Linda Calvert Jacobson, a Texan artist, proves this with her paintings of the native wildflowers. Though she’s been painting wildflowers for 20 years now, she did not initially intend to start this series. 

“I was actually in a job that I was getting frustrated and unhappy with. And I got out some old paints, and I started just doing some abstract work…as I worked on the paintings, they started looking like flowers.”

Flowers have always been a part of Linda’s life, even from childhood. She lived on a farm, and every year, one section would bloom with wildflowers. Even though her father plowed every other field, he left that one alone. 

“I remember asking him about why he didn't plow that field, and he said it's because he liked the flowers and that just always stuck with me…we a lot of times we think of our dads as these rough and tough guys and everything. But he didn't plow that field because he liked the flowers.”

It’s difficult to perfectly translate flowers to a canvas, so Linda’s more abstract style offers a different way to think about the colors and shapes of plants. Rather than showing viewers exactly what she sees, her goal is to convey the essence of the wildflowers. 

“It's a part of who we are. Nature is a part of us. That's the reason why I think I work so hard to capture some of that on canvas…I never do it justice, and I know that. But that's what I'm working to do.”

Linda feels that painting is a way to showcase people’s individuality, letting every artist show people how they personally see the things they are painting. 

“Each person that makes a mark on a canvas, nobody else can exactly duplicate that mark because it's their mark. And so I feel like when I paint, it's mine, you know, that's something that I can do uniquely that no one else can quite do the same.”

Visit Linda’s website for more information on her work.

A film by Nick Castronuova.