David Linn was born in Los Altos, California. Considered one of Utah 's most powerful symbolist artists, his works explore themes of spiritual passage through symbolic environments and wilderness. He lives in Elk Ridge, Utah.

Linn earned an MFA from Brigham Young University. His influences range from Baroque masters and American luminists to contemporary artists.

Linn's painting, It Is Enough (1998), won a merit award at the Springville Museum of Art spring salon. Evidence and Continuation was chosen to represent Linn's work as one of the 24 artists selected for the Lieutenant Governor's Third Annual Invitational Art Exhibition (2001).

Biography adapted from Artists of Utah

David Linn was born in Palo Alto, California and grew up in the hills of the South Bay Peninsula. He began painting at a young age, and has only occasionally paused to pursue other interests such as music composition and performance, mountain climbing, and designing objects that fly. He received an M.F.A. in painting from Brigham Young University, and currently resides at the foot of a mountain in Elk Ridge, Utah, with his wife and son. He cites influences as divergent as Baroque masters and American Luminists to contemporary Conceptual Site and Earthwork artists. David's paintings can be found in various museums, corporate, and private collections throughout the country.

“My work is born out of a need to articulate for myself the terrain of my own passage through mortality--to explore the events and implications of a spiritual existence forming deep currents that flow beneath the observable world. The symbolic internal worlds and environments of my paintings seem at times more real to me than my physical environment because they are evidence to me of what is felt more acutely. The paintings then become objects of devotion--personal evidence of a process that is, for me, verbally inexpressible. My work has evolved into a meditation on themes of searching, passage, and purification through these internal wilderness places--a landscape where events and objects assume multi-layered symbolic significance and actions become ceremonial in nature.“

Biography courtesy Artists of Utah.

Newspaper Articles

"Art as Metaphor." The Deseret News, April 11, 2004.

"Art Canvass." The Deseret News, August 21, 1994.

"Art to feed the Spirit." The Deseret News, December 3, 2000.

"Galleries." The Deseret News, March 15, 1998.

"Galleries." The Deseret News, March 16, 1997.

"Galleries." The Deseret News, June 19, 1994.

"Showing At Local Galleries." The Deseret News, March 28, 2004.

Books

Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. Artists of Utah. Salt Lake City, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999.

Oman, Richard G., and Robert O. Davis. Images of Faith: Art of the Latter-Day Saints. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Co., 1995.

Swanson, Vern G., Robert S. Olpin, Donna Poulton, and Janie L. Rogers. 150 Year Survey Utah Art & Artists. Salt Lake City, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2002.

Swanson, Vern G., Robert S. Olpin, and William C. Seifrit. Utah Art. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith Publishing Co, 1991.

Swanson, Vern G., Robert S. Olpin, and William C. Seifrit. Utah Painting and Sculpture. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1997.