Linda’s' unique situation has enabled her to capture the spirit of her subjects with a heartfelt vitality and skill.

 

Involuntary reinvention, that's what Linda Little experienced on July 7, 1996.  A preoccupied teenager blew through a red light and knocked her into a new dimension.  Gone was the old Linda.  Left behind was a blank slate who has become a contemplate sculptor.  Using a cognitive therapy, a Rehabilitation Center attempted to piece her broken mind back together for 18 months.

 

However, her brain would never be the same.  Linda has short and long term memory loss and imbalance, her hands sometime shake, her eyes droop, her head bobs and she sometimes stutters and slurs her words.  Linda takes medication, controls her environment and manages the amount of stimulus she receives each day.  Linda’s story is about turning tragedy into redemption, sadness into happiness, bitterness into thankfulness and thoughts of suicide into tender support for others.  For a grueling year and a half, when neither doctors nor nurses could put her back on the path toward healing, it was her hands and a master artist who finally did.

 

The master artist is Valentin Okorokov, whose art is considered a national treasure in Russia and his work has appeared in more than 38 worldwide exhibitions. "I will teach your hands to do what your brain cannot." he told Linda and then he showed her how to use her hands to channel her emotions directly into the clay, bypassing the encumbrances of her brain, turning her limitations into blessings, Valentin provided her with a freedom to create rather than being imprisoned by her limitations, she was, in many ways, set free by them. 

 

And yet her difficult journey is far from over.  The hard days have not passed.  They're just more endurable.  Her art is the oasis she visits, where things are good and where she is closest to God.

 

Linda’s beautiful sculpting studio located on  acres of natures hay ground outside of Dickinson, ND. Figurative and wildlife bronze sculpting is found at this gallery on the prairie. Appointments and commissions are gladly accepted.  All of Linda's works are copyrighted and have limited editions.

 

Nearly two decades later, she has matured technically and artistically moving adeptly between subjects wild and domestic, including keen-eyed hawks/eagles, pheasants, horses and so much more.