Colsh’s latest work is an ethereal rather than aqueous assessment of migration and change….Whether you’ve lived out of a suitcase or never owned one, each of us has felt the excitement and trepidation of change. Colsh’s artwork, her process and suggested stories, are stepping stones into life’s adventure.
--Suzanne Smith Arney, “Linda Colsh: Walking in Quiet” Fiber Art Now
Most often we see them from behind, usually solitary women. Their silhouettes, animated by repetition that implies determined movement, occupy the stark world of the anonymous, unnoticed elderly. It’s as if we’re following them into that world.
--Patricia Malarcher, “Linda Colsh’s Characters: The Unseen Made Visible” Surface Design Journal
Her colors are restful, but her imagery is not. Linda Colsh's work mostly stays within a limited palette of browns, blacks, and whites....Her images repeat, fading in and out of the background as if seen through the mist. Figures are mysterious, seemingly glimpsed from a distance....The viewer has to work to decipher the messages implied in Colsh's imagery, but the resultant sense of a deeper understanding is worth the effort.
--Martha Sielman, Masters: Art Quilts, Lark Books
Most fabric art has a certain heft, but textile or paper creations seldom take up space as forcefully as the pieces in “In the Round: Dimensional Fiber Works” at McLean Project for the Arts. Whether wall-mounted or suspended in air, the stitched, wired and clumped items in this five-artist show are exuberant and emphatic. The most cloudlike formations are by Linda Colsh and Sookkyung Park. Colsh’s “Fog and Veil” is a clump of two-sided, fan-shaped pieces of stained paper, partly painted and screen-printed with text in various languages; the phrases and numbers evoke the experiences of migrants, refugees and exiles.
--Mark Jenkins “In the galleries: Fiber-based materials yield remarkable art” Washington Post
When contemplating color palettes, she stays within neutral color schemes, like black, gray, white or ecru, tan and brown. Once in a while she’ll add subtle, almost imperceptible colros or a bright pop of red; however, her quilts are known for their neutral palettes.
--Danielle Williams “Travel the Globe with Linda Colsh” Art Quilting Studio
Linda Colsh's Mole & Henge is a richly somber composition, in which an optically dazzling interplay of circular and rectangular shapes enlivens a variegated field of mostly dark hues. The expansive scale of Colsh's work adds to its impressive depth.
--Ed McCormack, "Exposing the Significance of Contemporary Art Quilts in the Noho Gallery Exhibition" Gallery & Studio
Like every artist, Linda Colsh draws inspiration from her surroundings. But this quilter and surface design artist has a richer and more varied portfolio of geographical images and experiences to draw from than most.... She was particularly captivated by iconography, making it the focus of her Master's thesis and a strong theme in her work today.
--Cate Coulacos Prato, "Linda Colsh: Artist Profile": Quilting Arts
Linda Colsh's winning quilt Cold Shoulder has a sobering message stitched into its layers. The aged female figures, cloaked in heavy winter coats, are overshadowed by the dark landscape that surrounds them. Their very inclusion in such a dominating background in itself excludes them from the bigger picture, creating a statement of how we, as a modern society, deal with an increasingly aging population.
--Janet Rae "New Directions: Impassioned Messages" Popular Patchwork magazine
Repeated images of figures that are built up into beautiful and evocative compositions are characteristic of Linda Colsh’s work. This time, a lonely person under an umbrella battles her way through the deluge in the haunting Sudden Storm.
--Dr. Susan Marks, Selvedge magazine
I have admired Linda’s art from the first time I saw it several years ago. Go to her website and you will be mesmerized. Some of the adjectives that I would use to describe Linda’s work are: unique, interesting, inviting, calming, mysterious…and wonderful. I always want to view it again and always see something else in the piece. Her work resonates with me.
--Sondra Borrie, Modern Marks interview
