Linda Stark (b. 1956, San Diego) makes paintings in which personal experiences, visions, and sensations give rise to iconic images characterized by both sculptural textures and graphic concision. The products of highly virtuosic techniques that often require long periods of time to execute, each is like an amulet charged with devotional fervor. Stark's work is notable for the laser-like focus with which it is conceived and made, but she is unafraid of taking on themes with broad reach: the metaphysical and political ramifications of gender, the power of the female gaze and body, the roles played by animals in human lives and dreams, and the mythological and spiritual dimensions of the natural world. Her project, which has evolved over the course of four decades, represents not only a complete rethinking of how paint can function as a physical substance, but the sustained elaboration of an entire worldview suffused with curiosity, mysticism, humor, and criticality.

Linda Stark has been the subject of solo exhibitions at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2020) and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), California (2013). Recent and forthcoming group exhibitions include New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century, BAMPFA (2021); Made in L.A. 2018, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Painting: Now and Forever, Part III, Matthew Marks Gallery and Greene Naftali, New York (2018); and Forms of Identity: Women Artists in the 90s, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California (2017). Her work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut. Stark lives and works in Los Angeles.