Linda Burfield is a retired florist living in London, Ontario. She makes one-of-a-kind items available only on this website.
Gifts: If you want an item delivered in London as a gift, we will gift wrap it at no extra charge and have it delivered.
Delivery is $8 to $12 in London, Ontario.
Linda's Art, a preface by husband Stan
Living with Linda, here inside her creation, I've learned some interesting lessons.
First, she's stripped all the "shoulds" out of her motivations. Artists tend to believe they should be working on the cutting edge of contemporary art, and should be using the materials that are accepted for that purpose. They expect another artist looking at their work to immediately recognize it's place in the world of art.
Most wouldn't see Linda's particular canvas as a valid art form, nor would they think of what she does as art at all, only as craft. But seen in its entirety, it's obvious that it is art.
Her canvas is her home. She works on the whole home, on each room, and on all its details. She studies and works each aspect and each area to perfect it, moving back and forth between the whole and the details. Like a painter reworking a canvas, she is constantly repainting, building, arranging, designing, working with new materials, learning.
Linda creates her art not to satisfy contemporary sensibilities but only her own. That frees her to look anywhere for the elements of her art, including the huge world of the past.
Since she is her only customer, her only criteria is whether she likes something or not. Consequently, her real self and the world she has lived in and grown through, as opposed to what she has been taught, forms the basis of all she creates.
And once it is created, her happiness with it does not depend on whether others are happy with it as well. A need to be respected does not enter the picture. There is no superiority or inferiority. Just Linda and her artistic sensibility, her enjoyment of creation, and of what she has created.
I'm trying to apply that to my poetry. It's very freeing.
(Check out the photos of Linda's home on the Be Inspired! page.)