Her choice of colour provides some clues. Her flaming orange jacket, her red hair and her liberal use of brilliant oranges and deep reds in her paintings led me to research the emotional connotations associated with orange (vital force, strength, endurance, social behaviour, warm) and red (love, passion, excitement, appetite, health, courage, majesty, hot, danger, blood, weapons, aggressiveness, power, fire, hell). Clearly this is a woman to be reckoned with.

Image Construction

Linda Lee Blakney was born in Moncton, NB, grew up in Winnipeg, MB, and moved to BC to take her first job as a sonographer, setting up an ultrasound program in Chilliwack. While working in Vancouver she studied psychology and marketing at Simon Fraser University and completed her MBA. One of her profs recommended her for an opening as a marketing instructor at UBC. Just as the term was ending, a business contact called to offer her a position as a business analyst in the medical division of Kodak Canada in Toronto. This entailed training in Rochester, NY, and attending tradeshows all over North America to develop analyses of competitors’ products.

The huge lay-offs at Kodak in the mid-90s led to her return to ultrasound work in Toronto for Siemens’ medical division. When the parent company moved the Canadian division to Seattle, Linda remained in Toronto, where she added a certificate in Adult Education to her credentials, while continuing to teach and work as a sonographer. Then she completed her Masters in Counseling Psychology, commuting to Chicago for part of her course work.

After all her studies and forays into different careers, she still hadn’t found anything that “fit right” — not the corporate mold, not the community college teaching mold, and not the medical system world. There were always too many rules. “I realized that I wanted to work with people to help them discover where they fit.” So she completed a degree in career counseling at McMaster University and worked as an outplacement career counselor for DBM, a global outplacement, coaching, and career management firm. Characteristically, she moonlighted as a career counsellor at the YMCA.

Colour Makes Me Happy

About fifteen years ago, somewhere in between the work and the academics, she decided to feed her inner soul with a watercolour class. “It was fantastic!”, she exulted. “The instructor loved my spontaneity and encouraged my inventiveness. He didn’t make me follow any rules!” Therein lies a key to unraveling the mysteries of Linda Lee Blakney. To quote artist/sculptor Robert E. Kuhn, “…abstraction seduces the unconscious and therein lies the door to freedom - the inevitable quest of the artist.”

To quote Blakney, “Rules are made to be broken, and since I am a “process painter”, I never really know what to expect. I enjoy surprises. I started as a confirmed “water-colourist” intending never to stray. But the depths of acrylic colours and their texture edged their way onto my art board. Colour makes me happy; it feeds my soul. Watercolour taught me to explore artistic possibilities and now I enjoy the experimentation of mixed media. Acrylics are great for adding found objects — my first mixed media work evolved when I built a teabag into a painting. I love the texture, almost as much as the colour. And I want viewers to want to touch the pieces, and I encourage them to do so.”

Out of the Closet

Three years ago Linda moved to Carleton Place, hometown of her partner, Ross Blaine. Their timing was great. The arts community in Carleton Place was and is burgeoning. Linda credits Ross with getting her art out of their house and into the public eye. When Ross’ friend Barbara Couch dropped in one day, Ross started dragging Linda’s pieces out to show off her work. Barbara, who conducts her RE/MAX Real Estate business out of the lovely heritage McCarten House on Bridge Street, loved them. She asked Linda to hang them at two open houses, and the warm response encouraged Linda to bring her works out of the closet.

Blakney is now a member of the new Virtual Art Market Collective (V.A.M) in the Herald Building at 77 Bridge Street, where her works are displayed. Arts Carleton Place officially took flight in the fall of 2005, and Blakney will soon join their Artist Database. Her own website is under construction.
By the time you can pick up this edition of theHumm, you will be able to drop in at Ballygiblin’s Restaurant and Pub at 151 Bridge Street in Carleton Place to sample not just the good food and drink, but to feast your eyes on the vibrant, exciting mixed media works of Linda Lee Blakney. She invites you to touch them; I encourage you to explore how they touch you.

Linda Lee Blakney remains incapable of doing only one thing, so it should come as no surprise that she is working as a career counselor for a private company that provides resources for Canada’s Employee Assistance Program. It’s a phone service offered to employees suffering from career-related distress. In addition to painting “more than 50% of the time”, she tells me she is also developing an art therapy practice designed to assist artists with issues like creativity block and art/work balance.

To discuss any aspects of the balance this talented artist is achieving between her need to create art and her love of career coaching and counseling, you can reach Linda Blakney by phone at 297–0044, or by email.