Mitchell Linden

Early in my career I was a music video director/editor. When editing a video, I always loved that random frame that presents itself when hitting the pause button. The loud music would suddenly stop, leaving the edit room with a ringing silence and a compelling image staring back at me from the monitor. A scene of energy and chaos is transformed as it is frozen in time offering an opportunity for deeper examination. That one frame on the screen revealing something unflattering, un-posed, and expressing something about the subject that might otherwise pass unnoticed.

 

My paintings are often drawn from these “frozen moments,” the moments extracted from a broader, but unrevealed context. The images I paint are drawn from an imagined world, yet they include common, often ignored or forgotten objects and icons of pop culture and design that inhabit our lives, demanding our attention anew. I like images that I’ve carried with me since my youth that reflect our shared experience, the things that make us laugh and that reflect who we are as a culture.

 

The work is intended to be fun, assessable, kinetic, anecdotal, and at times provocative or amusing. I hope you enjoy it!