Above: Bikes & Linden leaf on the Rhine River, Frankfurt, Germany
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BY MEL RHODES
OCTOBER 2015
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
P
hotographer/
artist Russ Van
Der Linden,
60, is a big guy —
and his art is big,
too, both in size and
scope. As a matter
of fact, sometimes
people tell him his
artwork is imposing, which is fine,
because he uses the
word himself.
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“I use that word on purpose,” he
said. “I’m 6’ foot 7”, and a lot of my
images that I print are very big; I’ve
got a 5-foot-by-8-foot piece on my
wall at home.”
Put simply, Van Der Linden is not
interested in easing people into his
work, rather in immersing them in
the images, in making them feel the
emotions he felt creating them.
“I want that imposition,” he said.
Van Der Linden is unapologetically
forceful with his captured light, and
eager that the viewer buy in, see
more than a pretty picture, consider
the tonal qualities and the elements
of composition — the light.
An “Air Force brat” and retired
veteran, he spent much of his life
in Europe in close proximity to the
some of the greatest art the world has
ever seen, and he took advantage
of it, visiting museum after museum
across the European Continent. “I
tell people all the time that I worked
40 hours a week and then I woke up
in Disneyland,” he said. “And that
really is how it was. I rarely spent a
weekend at home; I was always on
the run. I was an English-speaking
docent at a museum in Frankfurt,
explaining to the officers’ wives
club of Darmstadt, Germany, why a
particular Rembrandt was important.”
He added he is an amateur but avid
art historian.
His father, a career US Air
Force fighter pilot who flew both in
Korea and Vietnam, passed on the
military life to his son who in 1999
retired after a 24-year career in
the Air Force. He also passed on
the photography bug. “My dad did
photography forever,” he said. “He
had an old Rolleiflex that I used to
play around with when I was a kid.
He also had an old 16mm movie