Linda Belden is a Bay Area artist who works with cloth, paper, stitching, painting, and mark-making to create work that is representational, intuitive, and subjective. Her professional background includes paper and textile design for her own company and other national and international design businesses.

For several years I’ve explored the nature of remembrance and forgetting, as well as my family history and its legends. Current events have changed “looking back” to assessing the present and hoping for the future. So, taking themes from life, I have explored the corona virus, Black Lives Matter, and environmental change, among other, more personal, ideas. Now, I am focusing on, am obsessed with, our precious planet and its amazing infrastructure, particularly trees and life in the forest. During the pandemic lockdown, I discovered and read books and articles describing the amazing traits of trees–that trees have their own DNA, that the forest is really a family with mother trees and offspring. I learned about the symbiosis of all parts of a forest and found it to be a spiritual truth. Trees made the earth what it is and can save it. I want to talk about nature, hoping to change the current conversation from dire to a positive direction.

I started making “stitched pictures” while on vacation in France.  I was staying with artist-friends who lived in a beautiful, rural area, and I had an idea to make plein aire embroidery.  I took my hoop, thread, and fabric outside and stitched the landscape from the side of the road, sheep eyeing me with suspicion and drivers of passing cars slowing down to have a look.  I absolutely love stitching. It is a Zen activity, peaceful and meditative. I usually work in my studio now, there is no wind, or flies, or other atmospheric distractions.