Her Story
About Linda
Linda Shockley is an abstract painter and fine artist who has devoted her life to art. She earned a BFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and a master's degree at Arcadia University outside of Philadelphia. After a career in social services that included 16 years working with autistic children, she retired to Florida and has spent the last eight years hyper-focused on her art practice. Shockley switched to abstraction during graduate school and now creates large paintings on canvas. She is building a fine art business that includes a website, custom framing, and marketing efforts to connect with collectors and interior designers. She attributes her success to learning perseverance, keeping a promise to herself to pursue art full-time after retirement, and working through frustration and self-doubt rather than giving up. In addition to her art, she volunteers by helping friends in nursing homes with doctor's appointments and pet sitting.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Linda
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to learning perseverance and keeping the promise to myself to devote my life to my art career once I had the time after retirement. I overcame self-doubt by learning to work through frustration instead of giving up, and some of my best paintings came from continuing to work on pieces that didn't look good at first. Being retired in Florida with no other pulls on my time allowed me to hyper-focus on my goals for the last eight years.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
If I were mentoring, I would concentrate on how to work through discouragement and things that aren't working out. Painting is intensely personal with no buffer, so it's very hard to stick with it when things aren't going well. I would share how to overcome that and persevere when things aren't going well, as that held me back in my own life.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
It's hard when isolated in this area to connect with collectors and interior designers who would buy the work. I'm focusing on presenting, framing, and mounting work to develop sales methods like contacting collectors and directing them to the website, which is the marketing part I didn't originally set out to do.
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