Linda Luttrell
Nancy Friedman, Co-Education Chairman
Using her artistry from an art degree obtained at North Dakota State University, Linda worked at a commercial plant care shop. However, she had not done any painting until she and her husband started renting during the winter months in Robson five years ago.
Linda and her husband, Jim, grew up in western North Dakota, spent 30 years in Fargo, N.D., and then retired to a glacial lake called Bad Medicine Lake that is in Northern Minnesota. Giving you a bit of geography, their home is 10-15 minutes away from Itasca State Park where the Mississippi starts as a small stream. Do you see a chilly pattern here? No wonder they come to Arizona for the winters and leave in April before the temperatures hit triple digits.
Linda will admit, summers at the lake are so filled with family, company, and gardening, that there is not much time for painting. Therefore, it is a joy to have time for her to paint here.
“The Fine Arts Guild has been inspirational. I felt like I needed to start all over again with basics. There were classes for beginners with encouraging classmates and instructors. It really wasn’t intimidating at all,” Linda stated.
Linda’s medium is watercolor, but she has tried some of the other mediums just for fun. “Painting and its quietness is a good balance with the other activities you can be involved in at the Ranch,” Linda said.
Most of Linda’s past paintings have been framed on an “art wall” in her Minnesota home, but this year she has decided to make paintings more adaptable to reproduction as cards that you can see in the accompanying photograph.
Something the monitors at the studio have encouraged is the importance of sketching. Linda believes it should be an almost daily activity for future projects. As her last comment to the readers, “Don’t worry if you think you can’t draw, just start, and with practice it will improve.”