Realism Artist Lorelei Linklater Discusses the Style of Realism and Her Current Work
The style of realism has quickly become one of the most significant artistic styles of the 21st century. Most well known for being a cultural response to romanticism, today, realism is often used as a tool in the artistic expression of problems experienced by modern society. Lorelei Linklater, a painter and actress, known for her work in Boyhood, Bomb City, and Woodshock, has spent the majority of her life in artistic communities and has explored different artistic styles before connecting with the style of realism. Within the past few years, Lorelei Linklater has used her art to discuss the abandoned urban areas of Southern California and how the passing of time influences not only human emotion but the concept of man-made permanence.
Lorelei Linklater Artistic Background
After discovering her passion for art during her childhood, Lorelei Linklater attended California College of Arts, where she received a BFA in painting in 2015. Within her post-graduate work, Mrs. Linklater explores various themes, including time member, and most predominantly, urban isolation. Lorelei Linklater is perhaps most well known for her realist style and textured brush strokes, and multi-medium elements. After moving to California in the early 2000s, Lorelei was struck by the state’s abandoned urban landscapes and how the passage of time had eroded a large percentage of California’s human-made structures. Her work today reflects the unease these abandoned landscapes evoke and helps create a dialogue with audiences regarding the fleeting nature of human experience and the impermanence of artificial environments.
The Style of Realism
Realism, otherwise known as naturalism, refers to a 19th-century art movement designed to create “truthful” art or art that attempts to represent subjects in their natural form. The realism art movement was created in response to High Art, a highly stylized art movement that dominated artistic communities since its creation during the Italian Renaissance. Similar to how the Romantic era of art was created as a reaction against the Industrial Revolution, realism was a reaction against romanticism and “bourgeois realism.”
Lorelei Linklater’s Current Work
Within her latest series, Lorelei Linklater has fixated on both light and perspective in order to showcase California’s desolate urban areas. Frequently, Lorelei Linklater will use sand in order to add dimension to her paintings after the use of textured brush-strokes various multi-medium elements. Below are some examples of Lorelei Linklater’s most recent work:
