Columbine Artist with Healing Touch Launches New Website

Deaf artist Linda Arnold, who gained recognition from her painting titled "Columbine Remembered" honoring the victims of the Columbine tragedy, launches website.

Littleton, CO (PRWEB) November 28, 2006 -- Deaf artist Linda Arnold, who acquired worldwide recognition from her painting titled "Columbine Remembered" honoring the victims of the Columbine tragedy, launches her first website (www.lindaarnoldart.com). The website features an on-line gallery that showcases a retrospective of her work, some which can be purchased as lithographs and greeting cards.

Among them is a grouping of three commemorative pieces, appropriately titled "Triptych of Healing", that Arnold did independent of each other over a six year period. The triptych includes a watercolor she was profoundly inspired to create to honor the victims and help bring healing to the families of the Columbine tragedy. The original, titled "Columbine Forever", hangs in Columbine High School. Demands for lithographs of the piece circled the globe beyond anything Arnold expected and still remains as one of her most popular works to date.

The second painting honors the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, which features Indian Blanket flowers, Oklahoma's state wildflower, with 168 petals, one each honoring a victim of the tragedy. The painting was presented to Governor Frank Keating in October of 2001 and hung in his office while he was governor. The last piece is in remembrance of the fallen on 9/11 which features seven roses at the base of two trees representing the seven World Trade Center buildings that were destroyed, and an unfinished area representing the lives that were cut short and left an empty space in lives of their families. The piece was presented to Captain Charlie Roberto in November 2001 at mid-Manhattan's Ladder 4 firehouse, which lost 15 men in the disaster.

"Art is an important way to communicate, emote and instill healing," says Arnold, who was born over ninety percent deaf and learned the powerful forces of expressing her creativity and celebrating life through her palette and brush. "It is also an effective channel for commemorating something that is important to us, and all of us hold something dear to us that we wish to remember and celebrate."

In addition to her works of healing, some of Arnold's other pieces include people portraits, landscapes, still life imagery and animal portraits, a new area that has recently expanded her repertoire. A graduate of the former Colorado Institute of Art, Arnold also provides art lessons to a small cadre of students, many like her, who find art therapeutic. Arnold knows very well how art can be such a salve for the soul as it helped her deal with her handicap and the lifelong challenges she has endured because of it.

Patty DePooter, a student of Arnold's who lost her son at Columbine, has found much healing through the healing force of her art.

"Whether looking at landscapes, portraits or animals you can sense the emotion that each stroke of her paintbrush captures in her subjects," says DePooter. "In her landscapes you want to be there. In her portraits you can see the personality and character, and with animals, their demeanor---and so you get a sense of the artist who is gentle, kind and real."

With her new website, Arnold wants to make her work more available to a wider audience. Recently, she has expanded into doing custom portraits of dogs and other animals. The website even features an ever-expanding line of dog art cards under the "DogGone Art" trade name and will soon be available for purchase through an on-line store that will be able to accept credit cards and speed up the process of acquiring custom originals and lithographic prints of her work.

Linda Arnold's website can be visited at http://www.lindaarnoldart.com where artist can currently be contacted for commissioned work or purchases of her prints and cards.

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