Linda M. Kolar Sold at Auction Prices

Hello! I’m a transplanted Midwesterner who has enjoyed the opportunities to follow studio art from a home base in New Jersey, starting with a one-credit class in life drawing at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. I paint portraits and landscapes in oils with a combination of direct color and careful drawing, usually from the live subject and now with some use of photo references.

In the late sixties, I left college early and commuted from Westfield, New Jersey, to the Art Students’ League of New York. I completed science degrees later at Union County Technical Institute, Rutgers, and the New Jersey Medical School. I returned to the League in the eighties on a work-study scholarship. Over both periods there, I won “red dots” in three classes. Instructors included: Patricia Sherwood, Marshall Glasier, Robert Beverly Hale, Jack Faragasso, Ted Seth Jacobs, Vincent Malta, Robert Beauchamp, Richard Goetz, Nelson Shanks, and Hilary Holmes. I benefited from attentive teaching by Tony Ryder and Leo Neufield, who continued Mr. Jacobs’ class at the New York Academy of Art.

I began exhibiting paintings in 1988. They have won awards in many local and regional shows, such as the Mountain Art Show in Bernardsville and exhibitions at the Ridgewood Art Institute, Somerset Art Association, Westfield Art Association, and the New Jersey Chapter of the American Artists’ Professional League. A landscape, “Ringwood Manor,” was included in the A.A.P.L.’s Grand National Exhibit in 2002 at the Salmagundi Club. I exhibit actively with the Contemporary Art Group and with the Art Centre of New Jersey in a variety of locations. One-person shows were held at the Watchung Arts Center in 2000 and the Westfield Art Gallery in 2005.

Private collectors in New Jersey and New York State have purchased my paintings and drawings. “Artists on Location” events in Garrison, New York, sold my scenes in oil from 1995 to 2000.

As a sound basis for representational art, I continue figure drawing at Minerva Durham’s Spring Studio in SoHo, at the Arts Guild of Rahway, and less often in Westfield and Woodbridge. I paint from portrait models at the duCret School of Art in Plainfield and at the Art Centre of New Jersey’s sessions at Riker Hill Art Park in Livingston. I have begun accepting portrait commissions, and I anticipate returning to independent landscape painting.