Linda Kessler is an American photographer and painter. She is known for her contrasting work between gritty black & white classic photographs and gestural, layered color abstractions. She currently based in New York and Patmos, Greece.

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Early Life and Education

​Ms. Kessler became interested in both painting and photography as a young child growing up in New York City. Her art was profoundly influenced by her early childhood years, growing up with working-class parents, living in a tenement, and spending most of her time engaged in play whether it was down the street at the schoolyard or on the streets of her neighborhood.  Her heritage is Ukrainian and Lithuanian.  An influence to her early on was her aunt, Ruth Vodicka, a well-known American/NY sculptor known for her huge welded figures.  While academic education was an obstacle for her, due to her being dyslexic, she found art became her form of expression and confidence. Her aptitude was recognized and rewarded with her first exhibited artwork as part of a group show, in the Lever House on Park Avenue, New York City, when she was eleven years of age.  Simultaneously, she picked up her first camera, a Kodak Brownie, at a similar age, fascinated with this tool which captured images, albeit her first image, of her family, had their heads cut off.  

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After completing her bachelor's degree in New York, she moved to Boston to further her education and interest in psychology and completed her graduated studies in Mental Health Counseling at Northeastern University. After four years, however, she returned to New York so she could ultimately pursue her original fervor and embarked on a classical education in art at the renowned Art Students' League and at the atelier of Bulgarian artist, Anton Russev.  After she completed her art studies she decided to travel to San Miguel de Allende, México for several months where she began to develop her vision, utilizing the foundation of art with a direction toward abstraction.

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In her mid 30s she had an opportunity to live for two years in Brazil.  While Saō Paulo was her base she traveled extensively to the northeast of Brazil and the Amazon where her natural response was to capture what she saw with photography, both in black and white, and color film/analog.  During this time she met Magnum photographer, Eli Reed, who, upon seeing her work, encouraged her to continue photography. She studied the masters and educated herself while becoming a relentless street photographer documenting life in Brazil.

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Upon returning to New York Ms. Kessler attended Pratt Institute for her graduate studies in painting. Her work started to transform into one utilizing her physical body and expressing her emotions. Abstract painters Antoni Tàpies, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, Joan Mitchell, and Otto Muehl, and the Friedrichshof community, in Austria, influenced her.

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In 2000 she accepted a position teaching art and photography as an instructor to middle/high school students in a New York City public school. Teaching gave her the latitude to invent projects to address a wide range of students and their skills. After fifteen years, Ms. Kessler retired and began to live for extended periods of time overseas. At that time she received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for her exhibition, "Subway Sleepers," at La Mama Gallery, in New York City.  In 2017 she lived in Paris for three months, traveling to Auschwitz, which had a profound influence on her; and in 2018 for six months in Barcelona, exploring Spain, Portugal, Southern France and Morocco.  And, then she discovered Cuba, which she returned to yearly. Her love of traveling she says "is like a child seeing the circus for the first time, with its excitement and fascination.”

 

She has had many solo and group exhibitions and is a recipient of multiple awards and honors for her paintings and photographs. Ms. Kessler continues the work she began as a young child, painting and photographing, and traveling.  Her next photography project is to document the art of Flamenco in the south of Spain.