Linda Curley Christensen: Mormon Artist
Linda Curley Christensen is a landscape artist and art teacher. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
She was born in Idaho in 1956 and reared in Salt Lake City, Utah, from the age of 10. She began painting when she was young.
Christensen admired the devotion of the five art missionaries (including John Hafen) who were sent to Paris in 1890 to study art so that they would be prepared to paint murals in the Salt Lake Temple. She submitted a proposal to the leadership of the Church to serve as an art missionary painting murals for the temples. A few years later, she and several other artists were called and set apart as missionaries to produce murals for the Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple. Her studio, the Prickly Rock Art Studio, served as a workshop for the missionaries. Other art missionaries included Billie Murray, MaryAnn Smith, Gwen Clark, Carol Jackman, Carol Harding, and Richard Miles. After the Oquirrh Mountain temple was finished in 2009, Christensen and the art missionaries moved on to paint murals for other temples.
Christensen has paintings in over eighty temples. She also has five large pieces in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. She collaborated with artist Michael Malm on the four paintings in the Sacred Grove Welcome Center. They previously worked together on pieces for the Priesthood Restoration Site in Harmony, Pennsylvania.
Her murals can be found in many states. Her work is also in the Springville Museum of Art’s permanent collection. She has won many awards for her work, including the National Gertrude Folgerson National Art Award and Signature Status in Oil Painters of America. She is included in the list of Utah’s top 100 artists. In 2012, Utah Valley University awarded her an honorary doctorate degree of fine arts.
Christensen and her husband, Greg, live in Wallsburg, Utah. Between them, they have twelve children. Prickly Rock Art Studio is also a farm, research lab, honey producer, and workshop.
