Gulfport has three awesome things. Well, actually, far more than three, but no one will argue these: Gulfport has fantastic bars (bring your dog to Salty's for a giant Jenga game, anyone?), a thrumming music scene (hey, how many mayors have a band, especially one called "Hot Tub Club"?) and a veritable cornucopia of art (seriously, walk through Clymer Park and gaze upon a giant tin man offering you his heart and tell us otherwise). What it hasn't had until now is a way to marry all three.
Enter Linda Worsham.
I love Linda Worsham because I will occasionally spy her in bars, painting (which is, by the way, the best excuse ever for sitting in a bar for hours on end. Aside from writing. Ahem.) Her new series, which hangs in Gulfport's Catherine Hickman Theatre (5501 27th Ave. S.) through the end of January, includes "local people enjoying local places" and features the best of Gulfport as seen through the eyes of an artist. Not all her art is people playing music in bars, but that's the latest thing I'll find her painting while I scarf down a Greek salad at Neptune's, or when she pops up at any other local watering hole.
"I have been able to draw since I could hold a crayon," Worsham says. "Making art is my passion. I am more likely to break the rules of style and technique than to follow them. I paint with acrylic because I am too heavy-handed for delicate water color, and too impatient to wait for oil to dry. I work from photos to create likenesses of people or pets in my three dimensional folk art as well as in paintings. I love the energy of bright colors and I revel in the attention to detail that can capture a moment in time."
