Linda Hudgins

Published 1:25 pm Thursday, February 13, 2025

A Grateful Remembrance

What is it like to bring art to the world? What is it like to bring the world to art?

Linda Hudgins knew the answers to both questions.

Whether figurative or abstract, Linda’s lines, colors, and brushstrokes bring a vibrancy to her canvasses. The landscapes of Africa, rooftops in Greece, the architecture of Holland; as well as the swirling, colliding and harmonizing colors of expressionist abstraction, all bring us closer to the energetic dynamics of Linda’s personality. At no point was her evolution complete, her artistic insights resolved. Year after year, Linda was experimenting and venturing into new modes and manners of creation, leaving behind a deep and rich legacy of aesthetic articulation.

Each painting is a sense of the world that only Linda could provide. Her art is not just a picture of what is, but a meditation on what can be seen for the very first time, if only we care to look. It’s difficult to see a cityscape or a grove of trees in our old, accustomed way after Linda has invited us to view it through the lenses of her imagination.

The energy and originality that we feel from Linda is not restricted to her paintings. As anyone who knew her can attest, Linda’s presence opened an intimate sense of the unique vibrancy she brought to her art. The range and depth of her intellect, her mischievous laugh, and her delightful eccentricities welcomed us into her artistic soul and showed us a spectrum of possibilities in which the world can be seen and thought.

Linda left us on January 15, 2025. There are so many loving friends and family members missing her dearly who have been graced by her creative life, and certainly by her love. Among those are her sister and brother-in-law Kathy and Joe McClellan, who cared for Linda so attentively during her final years; her son Hal Taylor, his wife Cassidy and their daughter Lilith, Linda’s grandchild; her stepdaughter Elizabeth Hudgins, the daughter of Linda’s beloved late husband Walt, along with Elizabeth’s husband, Pat and their son, Aidan, whom Linda loved as a grandson; Linda’s dear friend and co-conspirator in art, Doris Turner, with whom she shared many adventures abroad; her sister Donna and her extended family; and yours truly, whose aesthetic and emotional growth was profoundly enriched through Linda’s enduring friendship.

We, and so many others too, are among those who are privileged to have known and loved Linda well, and to have been changed so deeply by the life of warmth and creativity that she lived.

Mark Packer