Influenced by American impressionists Childe Hassam and John Twachtman and even Edward Hopper, Linda Hanks casts a loving eye on the American scene, indoor and out. Expression is as important as illusion, beauty as verism, placing the artist very much in the great American realist tradition.

With a B. S. from the University of Georgia, Linda began her career in microbiology, doing animal research in an immunology lab, and later working in a university research laboratory. Hanks has no regrets about her scientific background: “I think scientists have to be very creative – if you’re doing research, you have to have that kind of mind.” Consequently, she began studying art at the community school of the Atlanta College of Art. Hanks accumulated a number of excellent mentors there, teachers who instructed her in the gentle genres of portraiture, still life, and landscape.

Perhaps the most important part of Hanks’ training came when she moved to New York some years back and studied at the Art Students League under Michael Burban. Working 12 hours a day, and visiting museums and galleries on the weekends, Linda’s life was a total immersion in art. A total immersion that left Hanks a mistress of all she surveys, especially landscape.