Brief Bio

HAROLD LINTON was born in 1947 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the shadow of Carnegie-Mellon University. During high school, he attended CMU pre-college art classes in drawing, design, and calligraphy with Arnold Bank. He studied at the Lowe School of Art at Syracuse University where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and design in 1969. While at Syracuse, Linton successfully competed for the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship in painting. He went on to study painting and design at the Yale Graduate School of Art earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting with studies in architecture in 1972. Today, Linton is considered one of the well-known authorities on portfolio design for professional development in architecture, fine arts, and allied design disciplines and a leading proponent of color in architecture and the built environment.

Linton’s artwork since Yale has been reflective of the tenets and practices of abstraction.  His most recent work entitled, The Arcs Series, 2010 – 2019, is presently on exhibition at the Gillespie Gallery of Art, School of Art, George Mason University through July 27th 2019. These works consist of linear bentwood relief constructions of minimalist tenets created through expertise in bending/laminating sustainable hardwoods into uncommon curvilinear configurations. Experiences influential to this work originated while he was a guest professor of art and color design at the University of Art and Design – Helsinki, Finland [1995-1996]. His main responsibility was to establish and teach in the first graduate program in color design in Europe.

The works of the Arcs series refer to dynamic forms of action gestures and action painting. They also reference human movement in dance and diverse kinds of motion. The works evolved through countless studies in sketching open form composition. Eventually, the arcs coalesced into their final profile of intertwined dark and light linear elements embracing our growing human impulse to preserve, protect, and nurture our natural resources. Related to the Arcs series, another spatial body of work, the Constructs Series, was created throughout the 1990s – 2012. These relief constructions reflect Linton’s evolution from geometric configurations with traditional methods of rectilinear stretcher design-construction into a more intuitive geometric and asymmetrical configurations that would evolve into physical bas- and high relief.   [His expertise and reputation in woodworking and stretcher construction earned him an invitation to repair the stretchers, when necessary, of the dimensional works of Charles Hinman]. Linton’s paintings throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s entitled, The Grid series, reflect his evolving disciplined approach to painting from concept to construction, geometry and design, and innovative methods of paint handling into new experimental approaches that culminated in a ten-year retrospective exhibition at the Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, Michigan beginning in 1986.

To Linton, research underscores and fuels the groundwork along with conceptual evolution of his painting. He is the author of nineteen books and numerous journal articles on design, drawing, architecture, and color. Several published works have become adopted texts throughout the US, Asia, and Europe. Linton’s Portfolio Design first published in 1996 by W.W. Norton and Company, New York, is now in its fourth full-color edition. Linton is the recipient of more than thirty citations from leading art and design schools noting his work as a prized resource. In its various iterations and editions, more than 200 colleges and universities in the United States and abroad have adopted Portfolio Design. Linton’s work on color is also the subject of articles and interviews in the New York Times, Metropolis Magazine, Departures Magazine, and numerous journals. Having been associated with the College of Architecture and Design at Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, Michigan, 1974 – 1998, he served as Assistant Dean of the College of Architecture LTU from 1991 – 1998 and as Chairperson of their new Department of Art and Design. His research on color in 3d-design was recognized by an invitation to serve as co-founder and Professor of the first Master of Arts degree program in Color Design in Europe at the University of Art and Design UIAH, Helsinki, Finland, 1996 – 1997. Linton has also served as an invited visiting lecturer in design at over 100 schools of art and architecture.

From 1998-2005, Linton served as Chairman of the Department of Art at Bradley University developing scholarships, endowment, professional lecture and exhibition programs, internet technology initiatives, international study programs, and new undergraduate and graduate art and design studio concentrations. Following that, he served as Director of the School of Art, College of Visual and Performing Arts, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia until 2013.

 In 2001, he received the highest endowed award for professional excellence at Bradley University, Caterpillar Professor of Art, and simultaneously for the Department of Art, the William Rainey Harper Award for Department Excellence. In 2004, he was the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Grant to study cultural life and contemporary social issues in South Africa. He subsequently authored a photo-essay exhibition catalogue with introduction by Barack Obama entitled, “The Children of South Africa”, as a fundraising and awareness program that travelled throughout the United States.

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The Arcs Series Concept

To view his work across numerous solo and group exhibitions, it becomes clear that Linton’s concepts have evolved through drawing. Myriad studies in line and shape have inspired an investment in construction of each piece as the search continues for an essential gestural form frozen in waves of poplar, mahogany, cherry, maple, walnut, ebony, red and white oak hardwoods.

The works of the “Arcs Series” have reference to systems of harmonic convergence in nature, the structural qualities found in diverse organic forms [EAR, 2019], and physical gestures of expressive human movements in dance,  They have evolved through studies of the physical evidence of order and chaos, studies of proportion in nature, the suggestive pulse underlying our own preservation, and the instinctual response toward protection of our environment. To Linton, a concept is an idea, a theory or notion, but in art he describes his pursuit of viable concepts as to 'an approach' to the work of making art. Concepts are therefore a means of translating the non-physical problem into the physical reality.

Linton describes a concept strictly as ‘an approach’ to forming the artwork. When he thinks of a visual concept, he thinks of an abstract idea, one that is continuously evolving throughout the planning, design, construction, and execution processes. A concept, however, can also be linked to many other factors, and can evolve as the art grows and is transformed into reality. Concepts for making art exemplify sheer imagination at play and a way of responding to the design situation presented. Every project has its own baggage of critical issues, central themes or problem essences. The general issues circulating around the creation of a work of art can be approached in any number of divergent ways. To Linton, drawing is the pivotal ‘foreword’ to the creative processes of making art or a ‘basket’. He employs drawing throughout the evolution of ideas. He relishes going against the grain of the Minimalist precept that all traces of the “hand”, and “marks” of an individual be eliminated.

Linton maintains sketchbook records of all of his work, installations, and commissions. Large format bound sketchbooks [18” x 24”] serve as a repository for the graphic evidence of his thought-provoking process. Sketchbooks also exemplify how artistic thinking poses and answers elements in need of further inquiry. “The Arcs Series” sketchbook recorded numerous ideas, and thereby exemplifies the role that drawing plays in his spatial transformations. At the core of his works are the visual qualities of organic form originating in nature. The ribbed interior chambers of the nautilus seashell follow the arithmetic values in sequence of the Fibonacci series; the structural ribbed patterns of the maple leaf do as well, and more profoundly, so do gestures and expressive human movements in dance. While nature remains central to his work in the recent “Arcs”, an attribute of his abstraction that unites with his passion for expressive human gestures, his work has culminated in being a metaphor for the spiritual in art.

The “Arcs” are wall relief constructions of linear slats of exquisite material contrast. Sustainable hardwoods in natural earth tones provides an ample palette from which he works. The expertise he brings to the art of wood-bending is an inspired activity of purpose culminating in striking physical poses or gestures. In Linton’s words, “I make things rather than representations of them,” and, “I avoid references to time and place.” Frequent themes in the “Arc” constructions include forms of human gestures, the exploration of movement in ballet [See “Ballet Rotoscope” you-tube from the Arcs exhibition] and the residue of the acrobatic performance, as the grouping of points at intersections inspires formations to read as contrasting elements of energy and light.