Linda Nelson is a Santa Barbara artist specializing in landscape using pastels, oils, watercolor and mixed media, including jewelry. She teaches drawing, color mixing, pastel, and oil painting to ages ranging from five to eighty-five. Linda comes from a background in theatre arts and costume design, in which she earned a Master of Fine Arts from UCLA. She studied in watercolors while living in St. George’s, Bermuda, where she was raising her family and working in scientific illustration. Her illustration work has been published in professional scientific journals and research reports. Upon returning to California, Linda continued studying plein air landscape painting in oils with local artists including Larry and John Iwerks, Michael Drury, and Ray Strong. More recently she has been painting in pastel, working with Ojai landscape artist Bert Collins and figure and portrait artists Duane Unkefer and Jeremy Lipking. She has also lectured on costume design and history at the Santa Barbara (Granada) Music and Arts Conservatory. In 2020 and 2021 she has given presentations at the Realism LIVE and Watercolor LIVE conferences, and has led seminars for the American Society of Botanical Illustrators and for the Legacies III Calligraphy conference.
Since 2020 Linda has operated Ancient Earth Pigments, an online specialty art supply store, originally founded by Bjo and John Trimble as a way of educating artists in the ancient craft of making paint from dry pigments. At Ancient Earth Pigments you can find a wide range of products ranging from dry pigment powders and binders to tools for grinding and mulling paints, and supplies for gilding and illumination. The Ancient Earth Pigments website features a blog with instructional videos and articles on the science of pigments, as well as art and craft activities developed for the pandemic lockdown periods.
Linda has taught drawing, color mixing, oil painting, and pastel technique in the field and studio to students of ages 5 to 85. In 2020 she developed new capabilities for teaching live on line and via video clip. Linda also organizes small-group workshops in the Santa Barbara area with visiting artists, with local professional societies and on her own. Previous guest artists have included pastelists Kim Lordier and Tony Allain. Linda is looking forward to resuming these activities as the pandemic dies down, and has one workshop planned for the autumn of 2021. Watch this space for future workshop announcements.
Atelier Nelson LLC
PO Box 6535
Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA
ateliernelsonsb@gmail.com