Bio
Linda Plaisted is an American multi-disciplinary artist whose practices include photography, collage, painting and mixed media. Approaching her work as both artist and cultural historian, she uses visionary imagery to champion Women and Mother Earth; two critically endangered species. She is a 2026 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 200 finalist, 2025 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50, 2024 and 2023 Critical Mass Top 200, shortlisted 2025 Klompching FRESH Finalist, 2025 Rhonda Wilson Award Finalist and winner of the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers.
Statement:
Big T“traumas like war, violence, or lost loved ones can be life-shattering, yet compounded “Small t” traumas can leave marks that cut through the brave face we show the world.
Studies show that our mother’s traumas begin affecting us before we are even born; her pain becomes our inheritance. We carry these invisible wounds inside, yet over time they may present outwardly as disease or disorder. It’s death by a thousand cuts – unless we seek healing.
Facing my own mortality during a health crisis, I created this work to heal the accumulated scars of my female lineage, using original and vernacular photographs to draw upon their resilience. Working directly on a light box, I layered printed elements into unfixed collages, creating a translucent narrative of interior versus exterior life; revealing the positive face women show the world and the negative shadows they bear beneath. Cutting away faces like masks and placing them underneath in reverse, I then punched through the outline of each figure, allowing pinpoints of light to emerge. After drawing a pattern of large and small letter T’s atop the surface, I pierced through each cruciform shape with a knife; a symbolic wounding- offering a way for the collective pain to escape, and for healing light to enter. In a final act of ancestral healing I finished each piece with an intricate, deliberately imperfect hand-punched “Papel picado” pattern; the ephemeral paper art of Dia de los Muertos; here a metaphor for human life- Beautiful, permeable, impermanent.
Linda
Many Muses Studio
http://lindaplaisted.com
Linda@LindaPlaisted.com
https://www.instagram.com/themanymuses/
