happens when we hold back or repress our natural expression to conform to the expectations of family and society. It is the built-up layers of emotional pain, body armor, and especially muscular tension that people develop throughout life and use as defense and coping mechanisms.  Around the same time, in the 1950s,'action painting' was conceived to describe the work of artists who painted using bold gestures that engaged the body, more than traditional easel painting. For Linda Kessler her approach to her abstract painting resonated with Reich, action painting, and the physical. 

Graduate studies in Mental Health Counseling in her 20s informed her interest in psychology and psychotherapy. An Austrian community, Friedrichshof, during her visit, observed psychodrama, which combined music and theater to release painful negative emotions, captivated her and initially influenced her painting. Shortly thereafter, while attending Pratt Institute for graduate studies in painting, she began to experiment with pure abstraction and departed from traditional representational painting.  She began to utilize and embody the physicality, which became her process. 

Besides pure painting, currently, Linda also combines painting and photography, as mixed media pieces, where she uses digital techniques, as she would a brush, to transform her paintings to photographs.  She also uses many different techniques, either combining one or more photographs or specific techniques to transform the photographs into a completely different image.  Her technique is a continuation of her layering, in painting.  Rather then stay the same she embraces change.


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