My background:

I was born on March 3, 1945 in Eureka, California, and my maiden name was Linda Louise Larsen. I spent my younger years in Chicago and nearby cities, and in Summit, New Jersey, and then Elmhurst, Illinois, for junior high and high school. I was always drawing, from my earliest years, and I remember occasionally getting caught at it in academic classes. I thought that I would be a professional fine artist in New York City, but the times did not encourage that field for women so I pursued a more conventional path. In my younger years I painted with water-based media in a realistic vein. I began oil painting in high school, moving from abstract-influenced landscapes into colorful abstract expressionism. One of my paintings, Slide, was included in a juried exhibition at the University of Wisconsin (circa 1964) while I was an undergraduate there. (A few of my abstract paintings from the 60's and 70's are pictured above.)

I moved to Berkeley, California, in 1967, and continued painting while employed at UC. I was admitted to Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley in 1973 for one of the first classes with a high percentage of women, the Class of 1976. Once I became a San Francisco attorney with a hectic practice, it was difficult to fit in oil painting. But as I promised myself, I got back to oil painting. I collected art in the meantime, as did the law firms I was associated with, Phelan Stuppi Sorensen & McQuaid, then Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin, then Feldman Waldman & Kline. I am still actively engaged in the practice of law.

For nearly a decade my husband Dan Rohlfing and I have lived in Bodega Bay, California. We have the Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery, specializing in Early California Art 1850-1950. I participate in art organizations, and enjoy workshop participation. I also take my paints to Hawaii.

Artist's statement:

My personal expression through my landscape paintings is a careful modernist crafting of my vision based on realism but simplified and stylized. I view the structures of the land as organic shapes that might ripple or gallop away, if only as a result of geologic time. I like to capture the depth of a scene as if the viewer were soaring over it or moving around inside it.

There is of course "nothing new under the Sun" and I am influenced by those who went before. Earlier movements that inform my works are the jugenstihl, art nouveau, arts & crafts, and even the psychedelic art movement of my own lifetime, as does the WPA/regionalism that was more often associated with watercolor. Although I admire many artists and many styles of painting, those who inspire me most closely in connection with what I hope to express include Taos' Ernest Martin Hennings 1886-1956, Iowa's Marvin Cone 1891-1964, Missouri's Thomas Hart Benton 1889-1964, and among California painters Ray Strong 1905-2006.

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