Linda Joyce Ott

Linda Joyce Ott is an author and award-winning multi-disciplinary artist working in photography, painting, collage, textile art, assemblage, and video. Her studio is in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Her 2023 artist’s memoir, "I AM - My Journey To A Creative Life", is illustrated with images of her work. Here’s what it’s about:

After surviving five cardiac arrests in one night following a minor accident, Linda vows to ditch her career and live the rest of her one and only precious life writing fiction, making photographs, and creating art.

Wanting to make sense of her decades-long frustrating quest for an artistic life and to discover how creative work became her salvation form the rationale behind this intimate memoir. Digging deep into her memory cache and sifting through five decades of journals brings to light Linda’s Sisyphean attempts to break free and follow her bliss.

On this perilous journey of self-discovery, Linda learns how her relentless pursuit of career success and making money, of doing and achieving, repeatedly eclipsed her cherished creative dreams. Along the way, she explores the source of her ambition, her chronic anxieties, and her habitual coping mechanisms.

In a collage of styles (journal entries, emails,...

In 2007, she was juried into a two-week creative residency program at the Prairie North Creative Residency, Grand Prairie Regional College, in Alberta.

Between 2003 and 2006, Linda participated in eight, week-long intensive painting workshops facilitated by artist Harold Klunder in Ontario and Quebec.

Over the years, Linda has completed numerous art and photography workshops at Central Technical School, Ontario College of Art and Design, Ryerson Polytechnic University, and Mohawk College.

Linda’s art and photos have been exhibited in solo and group shows in Hamilton, Toronto and Alberta, including the Female Eye Film Festival, Artists Inc, Centre 3 for Print and Media Arts, McMaster Innovation Park, the Toronto Outdoors Art Exhibition, Visual Arts Ontario and Hugh’s Room.