Press Release - Always Never by Linda Geary
Linda Geary - No Return
Acrylic and oil on canvas. 50 x 45 inches. 2026.
Always Never
a solo exhibition by
Linda Geary
Opening Reception
February 28, 2026 at 6pm
pt.2
1525b Webster St.
Oakland, CA
pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to present Always Never, the first solo exhibition with the gallery by Oakland-based artist Linda Geary.
Geary’s practice has long been rooted in collage, cutting, masking, and deliberate construction. Building up color, shape, and pattern through layered compositions, she develops paintings where structure and revision unfold together. In Always Never, this foundation remains, but the new works move into a quieter, more atmospheric register while retaining structural tension. The palette shifts toward muted, weathered tones. The compositions feel open, luminous, and spatially deep, while the underlying framework continues to assert itself.
Linda Geary - Already Here
Acrylic and oil on canvas. 80 x 70 inches. 2026.
Geary builds her paintings through layered applications of acrylic and oil paint. In some works, layers of paint are wiped or washed away to reveal earlier decisions. In others, translucent layers settle over existing forms, partially obscuring them. Though these gestures move in opposite directions, both produce a similar effect: a ghosting within the composition. Shapes hover between emergence and disappearance. What has been constructed never fully settles, and what has been erased does not entirely leave. Decisions and structure re-emerge.
The exhibition’s title, Always Never, reflects balance and compression of time, as earlier moments remain active within the present surface. Large paintings can resemble fragments of murals that have been weathered or partially uncovered. Grids and recurring geometric elements persist with greater fluidity, less dominant yet still structurally present. The restraint of the muted palette introduces a different kind of tension, one rooted less in chromatic intensity and more in atmosphere and spatial depth.
A series of smaller paintings operate as parallel explorations to the larger paintings, offering condensed, high-energy investigations of form and color. They create space for risk and permission, allowing the larger compositions to unfold with greater openness and expanding the language of the exhibition across scale.
Linda Geary - Knives
Oil on canvas. 12.25 x 12.25 inches. 2026.
Always Never marks an expansion of the parameters of Geary’s practice. By loosening certain structural guardrails while maintaining intentionality, she creates paintings that are both open and assured.
Linda Geary earned a double major in Studio Art and English from the University of San Diego and an MFA from the University of Delaware. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, San Francisco Chronicle, Squarecylinder, KQED, Huffington Post, and Art Practical. She has received awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation, Alma Shapiro at Yaddo (2017), and Kent Fellowship at MacDowell (2022). Her public mosaic River (2021) is permanently installed in the International Terminal at SFO. Residencies include Art Omi, Ghent, NY; Kriti Residency, Varanasi, India; and Sanskriti Museum Kendra Foundation, New Delhi, India. She is faculty in Painting and Graduate Fine Arts at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and lives and works in Oakland.