The richly colored tapestries of rooster feathers, the sun-dappled swans, the soft hides of gentle-eyed cows are among the signature subjects of Linda St. Clair’s paintings. Growing up on a Tennessee farm, St. Clair was devoted to all the farm animals and spent many childhood hours wondering what they were thinking and feeling. She confesses that she still does that today when she is painting a particular animal.

These animals became fond memories for many years while St. Clair moved to Dallas, studied marketing and raised a family. About fourteen years ago, after marrying a painter and entering her husband’s world of art, she decided to become the painter she had dreamed of as a child. An initial rush of emotional, unstructured painting was followed by learning the necessary tools of drawing, perspective, and color techniques under the patient instruction of her husband.

Early landscapes began to recede into abstract backgrounds as the farm animals of her childhood became her inspiration and took center stage. In recent years her menagerie has grown to include wildlife like bears and wolves, as well as domestic pets. Each animal has a vitality and distinct personality communicated through vibrant colors and bold brushstrokes. St. Clair considers a strength of her work to be the looseness of her brush work and a sense of spontaneity. “My paintings are all done ‘alla prima’ or ‘in the moment’, usually completed in one session of a couple hours.”

St. Clair has been exhibiting her work since the early 1990s, beginning with a group invitational. Since 1997, she has had numerous two person and one person exhibitions in galleries from coast to coast and in Japan. Her work is in many private and public collections in the United States, including Equifax Corporation in Atlanta and the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin.