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I AM - My Journey To A Creative Life
Ever dreamed of quitting your job to pursue a more creative or entrepreneurial life? After surviving five cardiac arrests in one night following a minor accident, Linda vows to ditch her career and live the rest of her one and only precious life writing fiction, making photographs, and creating art.
Wanting to make sense of her decades-long frustrating quest for an artistic life and to discover how creative work became her salvation form the rationale behind this intimate memoir. Digging deep into her memory cache and sifting through five decades of journals brings to light Linda’s Sisyphean attempts to break free and follow her bliss.
On this perilous journey of self-discovery, Linda learns how her relentless pursuit of career success and making money, of doing and achieving, repeatedly eclipsed her cherished creative dreams. Along the way, she explores the source of her ambition, her chronic anxieties, and her habitual coping mechanisms.
In a collage of styles (journal entries, emails, poems, lists, and postcards interspersed with narrative passages), Linda takes the reader through the rollercoaster highs and lows, the joys and fears, the successes and failures that represent her life as a passionate, restless, constantly re-evaluating artist. As befitting an artist’s memoir, the narrative is punctuated with images of Linda’s art.
Wanting to make sense of her decades-long frustrating quest for an artistic life and to discover how creative work became her salvation form the rationale behind this intimate memoir. Digging deep into her memory cache and sifting through five decades of journals brings to light Linda’s Sisyphean attempts to break free and follow her bliss.
On this perilous journey of self-discovery, Linda learns how her relentless pursuit of career success and making money, of doing and achieving, repeatedly eclipsed her cherished creative dreams. Along the way, she explores the source of her ambition, her chronic anxieties, and her habitual coping mechanisms.
In a collage of styles (journal entries, emails, poems, lists, and postcards interspersed with narrative passages), Linda takes the reader through the rollercoaster highs and lows, the joys and fears, the successes and failures that represent her life as a passionate, restless, constantly re-evaluating artist. As befitting an artist’s memoir, the narrative is punctuated with images of Linda’s art.
262 pages, Hardcover
Published February 17, 2023
About the author
Linda Joyce Ott
8 booksLinda Joyce Ott is the author of a memoir, "I AM - My Journey To A Creative Life" (2023), the dystopian novel "The Naked Law" (2015) and a collection of short stories "Open Wounds, Secret Obsessions" (2013).
Linda honed her creative writing over the course of a successful career as a writer, editor and communications consultant. She has an Hons BA in English from McMaster University. Mentored by the late Paul Quarrington, she earned a Certificate in Creative Writing from The Humber School for Writers. Linda also took part in a workshop with Isabel Huggan at The Humber School for Writers.
Linda Joyce Ott is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist working in photography, painting, collage, textile art, assemblage, and video.
Visit Linda's website: www.lindajoyceott.com to find art and photo galleries showcasing her work in thematic groupings. Visit her blog: www.optimismofcolor.com to see more of her photos and artwork.
Linda has published sixteen photo art portfolios: A Rainbow of Irises; All Dolled Up; Auto Parts; Flowers of Hope; Hard Core: Hornby Island Rocks; Hood Ornaments; Hood Ornaments 2; Magnificent Mums; Mexico Obscura; Orchidaceous!; Outside Art; Signs of the Times; Strands of Time; The Earth Laughs in Flowers; Transcending Time and Tree Totems. They are available print-on-demand from lindajoyceott.magcloud.com
Linda’s art and photos have been exhibited in solo and group shows in Hamilton, Toronto and Alberta, including the Female Eye Film Festival, Artist's Inc, Index G, the Toronto Outdoors Art Exhibition, Hugh’s Room and Visual Arts Ontario. Her photos have been published in Art Focus, Photo Life, and Camera Canada magazines, and in The Hamilton Spectator.
From 2016 - 2019, photos from Linda’s Orchidaceous! portfolio, juried into the Royal Botanical Gardens’ Annual Orchid Show Art Exhibit won 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes in their categories. In 2015 Linda was Featured Artist at McMaster Innovation Park ‘s 18th juried Art in the Workplace exhibition.
Linda received Ontario Arts Council exhibition assistance grants for five solo exhibitions at the Hamilton Public Library’s Gallery4. In 2010 she received an Ontario Arts Council International Residency Grant for a juried, month-long residency at the Vermont Studio Center. In 2007 she was juried into a two-week creative residency program at the Prairie North Creative Residency, Grand Prairie Regional College, in Alberta.
From 2003 and 2006 Linda participated in eight, week-long intensive painting workshops facilitated by artist Harold Klunder in Ontario and Quebec.
Linda honed her creative writing over the course of a successful career as a writer, editor and communications consultant. She has an Hons BA in English from McMaster University. Mentored by the late Paul Quarrington, she earned a Certificate in Creative Writing from The Humber School for Writers. Linda also took part in a workshop with Isabel Huggan at The Humber School for Writers.
Linda Joyce Ott is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist working in photography, painting, collage, textile art, assemblage, and video.
Visit Linda's website: www.lindajoyceott.com to find art and photo galleries showcasing her work in thematic groupings. Visit her blog: www.optimismofcolor.com to see more of her photos and artwork.
Linda has published sixteen photo art portfolios: A Rainbow of Irises; All Dolled Up; Auto Parts; Flowers of Hope; Hard Core: Hornby Island Rocks; Hood Ornaments; Hood Ornaments 2; Magnificent Mums; Mexico Obscura; Orchidaceous!; Outside Art; Signs of the Times; Strands of Time; The Earth Laughs in Flowers; Transcending Time and Tree Totems. They are available print-on-demand from lindajoyceott.magcloud.com
Linda’s art and photos have been exhibited in solo and group shows in Hamilton, Toronto and Alberta, including the Female Eye Film Festival, Artist's Inc, Index G, the Toronto Outdoors Art Exhibition, Hugh’s Room and Visual Arts Ontario. Her photos have been published in Art Focus, Photo Life, and Camera Canada magazines, and in The Hamilton Spectator.
From 2016 - 2019, photos from Linda’s Orchidaceous! portfolio, juried into the Royal Botanical Gardens’ Annual Orchid Show Art Exhibit won 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes in their categories. In 2015 Linda was Featured Artist at McMaster Innovation Park ‘s 18th juried Art in the Workplace exhibition.
Linda received Ontario Arts Council exhibition assistance grants for five solo exhibitions at the Hamilton Public Library’s Gallery4. In 2010 she received an Ontario Arts Council International Residency Grant for a juried, month-long residency at the Vermont Studio Center. In 2007 she was juried into a two-week creative residency program at the Prairie North Creative Residency, Grand Prairie Regional College, in Alberta.
From 2003 and 2006 Linda participated in eight, week-long intensive painting workshops facilitated by artist Harold Klunder in Ontario and Quebec.
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