Linda Mota

Linda Mota is a Houston-based artist and educator who teaches troubled children after school. Earning her bachelors and masters through Houston Baptist University she seeks healing and answers through art.

Linda uses intense feelings, a study of religious history and other mysterious phenomenon in her work. “For years I’ve used my work as a healing for my own trauma and depressive episodes that have come into my life. I like the double think of seeing things in art yet seeing nothing. What do others see? I firmly believe there’s more in common with each other than we want to admit and I see art as finding that medium that connects us together.”

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On esoteric empathy and the distressed dream world.

For a two-week Digital Residency, Linda Mota is exploring esoteric meaning and an examination of empathy that often fuels our dreams. “This is an ongoing project for me personally that has evolved from delving into personal distress and breakdowns of the emotional being.” Through acrylic paintings and dry mediums that incorporate writing, Linda will use this project to analyze this heightened emotional and mysterious feeling that seems to connect most of us.

"There was a period of time when I was really young that I had these strangulation dreams. It was often with people that had ill intentions in real life. Sometimes they were faceless. I was told from someone that it was the unconscious warning you, or someone in real life was directly harming you while you were sleeping. They don’t occur anymore, though suffocation take a different reincarnation. There was once a dream last year that served as a weird revelation to a person I talked to who tried to cause trouble. A dream revelation? It felt like how distorted music feels like grating you."

"I absolutely hate the color yellow. It’s often associated with aggressive sickness for me. Dreams of disemboweling have neon colors, especially yellow. Violent dreams is the unconscious distress of yourself screaming as it’s the only way to be heard. Will you head it? Or let us fester. Watercolors, acrylics and markers were used here."

"I work with bones and sometimes the cleaning process gets a little messy, or it takes over a year to clean depending on the amount of flesh. Insides connected to vitals until it’s time to pass. Connected to something. Things are always connected it just depends how good or bad you perceive it."

"The audio was recorded back in 2015 when an amber alert was on tv at my old job. White noise, or loud ringing noise equivalent to tinnitus tends to be amplified in dreams. Whether it's to give a warning to something or that's the unconscious language we've yet to discover I don't know. Images that pop up in the video are from the dreams, messages are from a former person trying to make amends in a critical point in time. Everything pulsates and feels numb yet there's a message there that is up to you to decipher in the noise and symbolism."

"You want to think empathy is limitless in a realm of temporary things. you neglect yourself and let other infectious people drain you away until you're nothing but a husk. don't pleasure yourself to the idea it's a disgusting way to let yourself be destroyed."

Title: The Destruction of The Empath

"A message in the destruction of the mind. or is it a rebirth with a flesh figure. Can you see the faces? Faceless people are angels, whether their friendly or dangerous is dependent on mute colors. bright colors mean something good. Bodily destruction means a negative view on yourself and others who wish you harm."

Title: Brain Damage