Date: December 1, 2023 | Story: Stephanie Maxwell Newton | Photography: Courtesy of Henri Linton |
The sky takes on a range of hues in Henri Linton’s early landscapes, but in “Arkansas River #70,” it veers toward the pastel. Touches of blue-green and chartreuse show up in the trees and fields below, and the water has an almost purple tone, like the lavender reflected in the clouds above. “Color helps me express a mood or feeling,” Henri says, “more so than anything else in terms of how I feel and respond to the landscape around me.”
Henri first discovered his love of art in the rural Alabama town where he was born and raised. He remembers saving his money from shining shoes and washing windows to buy art supplies and receiving encouragement from teachers to pursue his education at art school. “I entered a national competition at Columbus College of Art & Design and I received the top prize, which was a scholarship to attend the school,” Henri says. He graduated from the program in 1966 and, after completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Boston University, was offered a position at the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff.
During his education, much of his work had been figurative. But that started to change when his wife went back to school in Ohio to work on her doctorate, and Henri flew often to visit her. “I’d spent a lot of time looking at the landscape from the ground level, but I began to see the world a lot differently when up in the sky in a plane,” he says. “You get a different sense of space and time.” He started taking pictures on these flights and sometimes enlisted the help of friends with planes at the small airport in Pine Bluff to take him up for 30 minutes or an hour at a time. Thus began a series that became popular throughout the 1990s: scenes of Arkansas waterways and farmland viewed from above and rendered in the impressionist style that made him considered one of the most well-known landscape artists in the state.
During his 45-year tenure at UAPB—almost three decades of which were spent as the art department chair—he influenced countless students, giving them the confidence and skills necessary to dream big. After all, to Henri, bigger is better; in fact, he considers the works in his Arkansas landscape series to be quite small, and many of his more recent commissions span entire walls. “When I get up there to about 5, 6, or 7-foot squares, that’s a good, comfortable size for me,” he says. Henri takes commissions on a very limited basis. You can reach him at [email protected]
