Linda J. Green/Metzler was born in Chicago and began the classical study of drawing and painting at the School of the Art Institute during high school and college summers. She continued academic art training in California receiving her BFA in Painting from Scripps College at the Claremont Colleges. Her junior year was spent studying oil painting with Julian Levy and Joseph Hirsch at the Art Students League of New York where she received a scholarship, exhibited in the Annual Concours Student Exhibition and was elected a life member in 1975.

Once graduated from Scripps she exhibited on home ground, the near north side of Chicago in a number of Gold Coast venues before traveling to London, England where she honed her watercolor and illustration skills traveling the British Isles.

Eventually settling in St. Louis in the early 70’s, Linda continued her design studies at Washington University and taught for a period at Forest Park Community College in graphic design and drawing. Her design and illustration credits include a year of art direction at Ralston Purina in the International Division where she expanded her appreciation of all types of animals as graphic subjects.

By the mid 70’s Linda had developed a thriving business, Green, Inc. Design Communications providing graphics and marketing services to a distinguished list of St. Louis companies and institutions. She was honored with design awards from the St. Louis Society of Communicating Arts, the National Agri-Marketing Association, and won recognition for the US Army Corps of Engineers’ St. Louis Flood Protection Project. The submission she prepared for the Presidential Design Awards Competition in 1985 secured a Federal Design Achievement Award for the Corps from the Federal Design Achievement Commission in Washington, D.C. where it was displayed in the White House.

Returning to painting in recent years as her primary interest, Linda brings to her current work the perspective and discipline of many years devoted to graphic design and especially, its illustrative aspect. During these years she grew to appreciate the reproductive qualities of watercolor media and continues to explore its versatility in original paintings and print production.

Her love of color, blossoming in the sunny atmosphere of California, remains a compelling interest throughout her design and fine arts work today. Color, and how it shapes the spaces we inhabit, dominate Linda’s response to the natural world and fills the rural scenes of flora and fauna as well as the urban places she portrays. She enjoys using portable water media, sometimes combined with pen and ink to create spontaneous plein air watercolors in and around her adopted home of St. Louis, Missouri.

In addition to creating lush watercolor scenes Linda has embraces Giclee fine art reproduction as an ideal way to share her colorful visions with a larger audience. She also offers a pleasing fine craft application of her giclee prints as decoupage tops for small wood and nostalgic tin boxes, and cards.  Employing digital photography as an integral part of her creative process, she has recently offered a new series of images taken through the prism of a lifetime of painting, many of those years in Missouri.  Wandering the countryside in recent seasons for “en plein air” painting events with camera in hand, her painter’s lens is drawn toward the light and color of romantic landscapes and the moody quiet of hidden places.

Recent Recognition:

• Juried member of Best of Missouri Hands in Fine Arts since 2004
• Signature Member of both the St. Louis Watercolor Society and The Artists Guild of St. Louis
• Member Missouri Watercolor Society
• Honored by The SLWS and BOMH by inclusion in juried exhibitions since 2004 and recipient of numerous awards for achievement in watercolor painting.
• Best of Show in the Jefferson County Art Guild’s annual Exhibit 2008.
• Winner in Jefferson Memorial National Park’s En Plein Air Event 2008
• Featured Alumnae, “Scripps -The Women’s College – Claremont,” Alumnae Magazine: Claremont, California, Fall Issue, 2003.  Art also featured in Missouri Life Magazine, 2006.
• Life Member, The Art Students League of New York

Memberships:
St. Louis Artist’s Guild
St. Louis Watercolor Society
Missouri Watercolor Society
Life Member, Art Students League of New York