Follow The Light (Diptych)

What defines a painting, a poem, or a photograph? Contemporary artist Linda Zacks creates mixed-media artwork that refuses to answer—living deliberately in the in-between, straddling mediums, and resisting easy classification.

Follow the Light is a large-scale visual poem. Spanning a 120 × 48-inch canvas, this original mixed-media diptych functions simultaneously as a painting, text art, and a love letter to the changing seasons. Its core subject is light itself—capturing the quiet but seismic moment when winter's ominous darkness finally yields to the long, lingering evenings of spring. The arrival of daylight saving time brings a technicolor reawakening of energy, color, and spirit.

The canvas operates in stark contrasts—black on black, white on white—shifting fluidly between shiny, matte, and metallic surfaces. Thin, spare marks give way to dimensional, globby splats of paint. Words emerge and dissolve depending on how light falls across the surface, making each viewing a unique experience. The painting doesn't just depict the changing of the light; it actively participates in it.

Central to the work is Zacks' signature process, which she calls the "Human Typewriter." By stamping each letter individually, one by one, she mimics the mechanical action of a physical typewriter. Every character carries its own slight imperfection, shaped by the pressure of the hand behind it. The result is typography that breathes and accumulates—offering a kind of analog intimacy in a world dominated by computerized precision.

The typewriter is vital to Zacks' artistic practice. Her husband proposed on one, and she types on hers constantly. It's a physical, imperfect, and demanding tool whose every letter bears the mark of effort and human intention. For Zacks, it remains the ideal instrument for a love letter: beautifully flawed and irreducibly human.