Iris 13 Print

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, poems, lists, and postcards interspersed with narrative passages), Linda takes the reader through the rollercoaster highs and lows, the joys and fears, the successes and failures that represent her life as a passionate, restless, constantly re-evaluating artist. As befitting an artist’s memoir, the narrative is punctuated with images of Linda’s art. "I AM - My Journey To A Creative Life" is available as a paperback, hardcover and eBook from Amazon. Linda's photographs have been published in Art Focus, Photo Life and Camera Canada magazines, and in The Hamilton Spectator. Linda has published sixteen photo art portfolios: A Rainbow of Irises; All Dolled Up; Auto Parts; Flowers of Hope; Hard Core: Hornby Island Rocks; Hood Ornaments; Hood Ornaments 2; Magnificent Mums; Mexico Obscura; Orchidaceous!; Outside Art; Signs of the Times; Strands of Time; The Earth Laughs in Flowers; Transcending Time and Tree Totems. They are available print-on-demand from www.magcloud.com View more of Linda’s work on her website: www.lindajoyceott.com on her YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/AF_48xwwBvI and on her blog: www.optimismofcolor.com.