Willow Graphics<\/a>, she started in the 1990s doing hand-illustrated birth records and family trees, watercolor on parchment paper, complete with impeccable calligraphy. But the work for which she is widely known in the LBI region consists of her world\u2019s most familiar and comforting sights and experiences: sweeping marshland and bay views, beach cruisers, underwater swimmers, \u201cbeach action,\u201d clams and oysters, mooring balls and boats.<\/p>\nRamsay\u2019s work has been sold at the Wildflowers Too gallery in Barnegat Light since it first opened, over 15 years ago. This month from July 3 through 17, she is the gallery\u2019s featured artist, with a reception scheduled for Sunday, July 12 from 2 to 4 p.m. For the special two-week run, Ramsay will add to six or eight more paintings, on easels, and swap out some of the six pieces already on the walls, for a balanced variety.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Ramsey-134-200x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
HONEST WORK:\u00a0 Linda Ramsay paints, on average, six to seven hours a day in her studio when she\u2019s not packing and traveling for summer shows. (Photo by Ryan Morrill)<\/p>\n
In her loft studio last week at the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences in Loveladies, where Ramsay has been the artist-in-residence for eight years and where she\u2019ll be teaching a \u201cLandscape Paintings of Waterlilies\u201d\u00a0class on Thursday, July 30, a newly finished bicycle painting sat on her easel, ready for LBIF\u2019s upcoming \u201cCoast\u201d exhibition. She will also participate in the upcoming LBI Artist Studio and Gallery Tour, which she was involved in starting, with such stalwarts as Mary Tantillo of SwellColors Glass Studio and Matt Burton of the now-closed m.t. burton gallery.<\/p>\n
The LBIF loft is where she keeps her tools and materials, as well as her art portfolios, organized in fat binders carefully labeled and dated; it\u2019s also where she shares workspace with fellow painter Lori Bonnani.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople seem to recognize my style, even though I do a lot of different images,\u201d Ramsay said. \u201cThat\u2019s really what I want. Even my crabs or my swimmers. Maybe it\u2019s my colors? Maybe it\u2019s my palette that I use?\u201d<\/p>\n
The sedges and channel behind her house\u00a0were her early subject matter when she was painting from her deck and garage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was my whole view,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She soon found beach cruisers to be a challenging yet satisfying subject to explore, given their rigid frames, spokes and chains. \u201cAlso, the roundness is not always round,\u201d Ramsay noted.<\/p>\n
These days she finds herself moving in a more abstract direction. Her new work is a massive school of fish, full of movement and light as it disappears into the ocean\u2019s depths. With relatively few brush marks she manages to create a dense and action-filled scene.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Ramsey-138-300x197.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
(Artwork by Linda Ramsey)<\/p>\n
Her commissions range from meaningful compositions to shore-themed originals in custom colors. To get it just right, Ramsay asks clients to give her as much information and insight as possible about the space they intend to fill, down to decor, fabrics, motifs and lighting considerations.<\/p>\n
In her own creative process, inspiration might come from a striking photo, she explained. She likes an interesting crop and often makes circular motions with her brushes and tools, hence the bicycles, life preservers and swirled shells of clams and oysters. She works from reference photos and uses a projector if necessary, but relies more on her eye. She uses assorted silicone scrapers with different \u201cteeth\u201d to achieve special effects.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually dig into the paint,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Lately she\u2019s been experimenting more with the palette knife, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to play,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to keep on trying new things.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of her innovations is a form of upcycling, where she paints over old paintings, keeping intact hints of their character.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Ramsey-137-300x237.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u2018Blue Crab,\u2019 (Artwork by Linda Ramsey)<\/p>\n
\u201cI just do this: I take charcoal, and I do all the figures,\u201d she explained, gesturing at a canvas. \u201cI make the figures in the back, in perspective, smaller. Then I think of things people do at the shore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she paints the sand in the negative spaces, leaving little triangles here and there, \u201cbecause it gives it action.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early in her \u201cbeach action\u201d series, she didn\u2019t paint the figures\u2019 skin and swimwear, she said. The charcoal outlines allowed patches of the original underpainting to show through. But a gallery manager told her the work wasn\u2019t selling because customers were not connecting with the figures. \u201cThey were all blue,\u201d Ramsay noted. So, she took it back and painted them a spectrum of flesh tones \u201cand then \u2013 guess what? \u2013 it sold.\u201d Now her beach people range from pale pink to beige to brown.<\/p>\n
She keeps them whimsical and intentionally unserious, she said. Embedded are beach umbrellas, dogs, gulls and, always, one naked pair of butt cheeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose (beach action pieces) are fun to do, especially really, really big,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Victoria Ford<\/p>\n
victoria@thesandpaper.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Artwork by Linda Ramsey) If Linda Ramsay lined up all the paintings she has ever made, they would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-382993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Ramsey-140.jpg\")
<\/p>\n