Two things are certain to happen every dawn. The sun will rise and Haverhill artist Linda Jo Nielsen will be outside painting.
For the last 20 years, Nielsen has been delighting the art community throughout the state with her stirring landscapes and animal portraits. What's perhaps most surprising about her long and industrious career is that she doesn't even consider art her day job.
"It's one of those gifts," she said. "I've always had it."
Rising in the early hours of the morning, Nielsen drives out to a variety of hills, ponds, forests and parks throughout Essex County in order to capture a precise moment in time where the lighting and atmosphere are just right for her landscape artwork.
She said that her car groans under the weight of her supplies.
"My little car is packed full of things I might need," she said.
Describing herself as an American Impressionist artist, Nielsen's landscapes take realistic places and locations but abstract them with strong colors and blurred lines. Despite her "artistic license," however, she said that all her works have a basis in reality.
"I'm not someone who puts marks down and has someone guess what they are," she said.
An active painter since the early 1980s, Nielsen said she began sketching family pets to pass the time as a child. The early experiences of working with animals stuck with her; much of her early work as a professional artist was focused on animals.
"Animals always played a big part in my life," she said. "We always had someone lying on the floor."
Though she's moved away from sketching animals, she said she still tries to find ways of working them into her pieces.
During her budding years as an artist, she took classes under the supervision of the late Barbara Baldwin of West Newbury. Nielsen said it was Baldwin's suggestion that she try producing art professionally, encouraging her to become far more public with her work.
"I remember thinking, 'Wow, she thinks I'm good,'" Nielsen said.
Her teacher's commendations haven't been the only praise she's received over the years. She has received awards from the Salmagundi Club in New York, the Jean Clohisy Memorial Award from the Haverhill Art Association and a Presidential Citation.
Nielsen lives with her mother and sister at her childhood home on Davis Place and works for the AAK Corporation of Plaistow, N.H., as an engineer assistant. She converted the home's attic into a multiple-room art studio in the late 1990s.
The expansion was necessary because every Tuesday evening she teaches five students.
Besides her tutoring, Nielsen is involved in the local art world as a member of the Greater Haverhill and Newburyport art associations.
Though she may not be a household name currently, her artwork will forever be a part of Haverhill's history. One of her designs is a stained glass window at Winnekenni Castle.
"Those grounds have inspired me," she said.
This August, she'll be included in a new exhibit, titled "Painting Cape Ann," alongside two other artists at the Laura Coombs Hills Gallery in Newburyport.
If You Go
What: "Painting Cape Ann"
Where: 65 Water Street, Newburyport
When: Aug. 5 through 11. Opening reception Aug. 6, from 7 to 9 p.m.
Who: Artists Ann Goldberg, Linda Jo Nielsen and Mike Storella will exhibit works.
