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Linda Storm
USA
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“I remember feeling the sky becoming part of me as I breathed in the colors, and I found forever in the black between the stars.”
Linda Storm grew up in the rural village of Alden, New York, USA. She loved to read world myths about ancient, powerful goddesses who gave birth to seasons, created the arts, healed diseases, grew magical golden apples, and offered eternal life.
She Who Weaves Remedies | Mixed Media
$7,500
36 X 24
The ancient Maya were expert astronomers and masterful architects. They wrote books on bark paper in 500 BCE, and they knew about the healing properties of plants and fungi. For the ground, I wove together life and death with mycelium, and over that painted a soft green lush patch of land for the ancient goddess Ixchel to be rooted.
Linda was 13 when her mom married a fabulous artist. She was suddenly surrounded by more art supplies than seemed possible. Her stepdad taught her painting techniques, and brought her to The Albright Knox Art Gallery, to see works by the great masters. He booked her first gallery exhibit when she was 14, in Lancaster, New York. Her paintings sold out.
She Who Heals | Mixed Media
$7,500
36 X 24
She Who Heals is my re-imagining of the 7000 year old Goddess Bau, who was so important that 2000 years after her beginnings, and after Sumer (now Iraq) was conquered by the Babylonians, she was adopted and renamed Gula. She (they) had a wolf-dog companion. Some historians say dogs healed when they licked wounds. We dog lovers can imagine our own reasons.
She continued to make art through her teens and was commissioned to paint her first album cover, a race car, and several murals. She began collecting art books and attending art classes. She also decided to become a mother.
“We live in a misogynistic society that is contrary to goddess culture.”
At 24, she met her husband and moved to his homeland, Santa Fe, New Mexico, where her art career flourished. In 2019 and 2020, she received The Albuquerque Journal’s Peoples’ Choice Award as the Top and Best Artist. The Santa Fe Youth Symphony graced their program covers with her art. She created art for stage projections for The New Mexico Platinum Music Awards, curated several public galleries, painted murals, created album covers, and painted collaboratively with other artists from around the globe.
She Who is Becoming | Mixed Media
$7,500
36 X 24
She Who is Becoming was inspired by Skuld, the youngest of the three Norn sisters. More powerful than any god or human, she nurtures the future, even if it means discarding her sisters’ knowledge of the past and present. The Norns have been revered as seers since ancient times. In fairy tales they were The Three Godmothers, Raphael painted them as The Three Graces, and Shakespeare portrayed them as The Three Fates.
Mermaid lore is prevalent throughout cultures around the world. In Celtic myths, she is known as a Selkie.
Sedna is a Native American seal deity who guards the ocean. In Europe and America, she is known as a mermaid. Many lonely seafaring explorers and fishmongers sang songs of falling in love with one. MIne is a guardian of the seas.
She Harbours the Sea | Mixed Media
$14,000
72 X 48
In 2018, Linda was invited to debut her goddess series in Italy, with 6 completed paintings. She titled the exhibition, The Feminine Almighty. In 2019, Linda exhibited her goddesses in Santa Fe, New Mexico with 9 completed paintings. For that exhibit, titled, Gaia of a Thousand Faces, a professional storyteller stood before each painting and dramatically shared the ancient story of each goddess. The gallery was lit by candles, while dimmed lights highlighted the art.
“My wish for my goddess series is to awaken awareness of the divine feminine, to balance a scale that is heavily tipped toward male dominance, and to ask how current beliefs affect gender roles, spiritual life, and political power.”
“When I am immersed in the process of painting, the art evolves, as if my hands are guided and the work has a life of its own. Painting, for me, is letting go of control with complete confidence and trust that the outcome will be a delightful surprise, a gift.”
Linda creates her goddess paintings with many layers, symbolically, and with various mediums. Her art is based on stretched canvas with coats of gesso and acrylic paint mixed with sacred rainwater. The overlayers may contain ink, silicone, paint markers, metallic paints, textures, glow-in-the-dark pigments, diamond dust, and mica. She creates with brushes, fingers, and sometimes palette knives. During her extensive research, Linda roughly sketches her ideas on paper.
She is Hope | Mixed Media
$7,500
36 X 24
In the myth of Pandora, all of the harmful things in the world were released from the box she was told not to open, but she did because she was curious. Hope remained hidden inside, and the lid closed her in. The story, which is thousands of years old, ended that way in many versions. As a child, I wondered why Pandora didn’t let Hope out. Was she too afraid to open the box again?
Linda paints her goddesses in gray tones so they appear as ancient living sculptures. She creates for them a magical landscape that reflects their reverent place in a surreal world. They are rooted to the Earth, unfazed when standing on hot coals, and they can breathe underwater. Some appear cracked, revealing the light within.
She Germinates Vision | Mixed Media
$7,500
36 X 24
Known from stories told for thousands of years, this forest guardian was known as Artemis by Ancient Greeks and Diana by Ancient Romans. In my painting, her arrow holds seeds ready to be propelled forward from her bow, as owls observe her from under the full moon. Connected to all life, she is part animal, part plant.
During her many years of teaching history, global religions, and myths as a mother and Montessori teacher, she was sensitive to the fact that history taught children to value confrontation and conquering and that the word men was used instead of humans or people. Stories of women and females as leaders were missing. Dictionaries defined witches as evil, when, in reality, they were female victims of religious persecution by male-dominant cultures. Microsoft Word auto-capitalizes the word God and not Goddess.
This painting hails the ancient goddess of seasons, who laid lush fruitful land barren when her daughter went missing. I painted her with a doorway in the center of her body, to which she holds a key on barbed wire, which some see as a rosary at first glance. She is connected to the trees which connect her to Earth. The flowers at the end of her robe were an in-the-moment decision.
She Holds the Key | Mixed Media
$7,500
36 X 24
“I am currently working on plans to exhibit my goddesses as an installation.”
She Resonates Harmony | Mixed Media
$7,500
36 X 24
She Resonates Harmony was inspired by Saraswati, the four-armed goddess that is part of a trinity that permeated all of Asia with her attributes of knowledge, music, and the arts. She was a refuge to the vulnerable, who prayed to her for protection. In my painting, she plays a rooted instrument that grounds her and entwines around her body as it grows into a tree sprouting magical golden apples. Hamsa, her sacred bird, carries her spirit through dimensions.
The linear timeline of moving forward and conquering disregards the wonder-filled cycles of women and nature, and it also perpetuates the suppression of the feminine.
She Sustains Balance was inspired by several Ancient Egyptian Goddesses. In my painting, she holds a scale to weigh the desire for golden eggs against the feather of the sacred ibis. Her dress is woven with a window depicting the depth of life that she carries within her soul. In her right hand, she holds an ankh made of a rooted and sprouting branch. Incense offerings rise from the bowls that surround her as she stands on hot coal. unfazed.
She Sustains Balance | Mixed Media
$7,500
14 X 11
Her wish for her goddess series is to awaken awareness of the divine feminine, to balance a scale that is heavily tipped toward male dominance, and to ask how current beliefs affect gender roles, spiritual life, and political power.
American Madonna | Mixed Media
$450
14 X 11
This painting reflects my feelings about the terror that children and women are experiencing in the United States of America.
“Whenever I had a blank paper, which was mostly when my mom opened a package of stockings, I drew the divas I imagined in tales.”
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