Linda Williams Palmer grew up playing in the woods by her family home in eastern Oklahoma. As a first-grader, she played under a large oak tree on the playground and in the woods in front of her farm house. These childhood experiences inspired her interest in trees and, as a professional artist she often chooses to draw and paint them. Sometimes the trees are imaginary interpretations, like those in her Guardian and Dancing Trees series. Sometimes the trees are representational of famous or historic trees, like the series created for ARKANSAS CHAMPION TREES; AN ARTIST’S JOURNEY. Palmer is one of the few artists, and the only one in Arkansas, who has created a series of art works based on individual, recognizable, documented trees such as the Arkansas champion trees. The champion tree project began in 2007 when she viewed the list of Arkansas’s largest examples of each species of tree, determined by the Arkansas Forestry Commission. Traveling more than 15,000 miles to photograph the trees, Palmer has to date created 28 large scale portraits of champion Trees and her traveling exhibit of the same name has been exhibited in 21 venues throughout Arkansas. Collecting oral histories and keeping a journal of her adventures inspired Palmer to envision her first book, and formed the basis for AETN’s award winning documentary ”CHAMPION TREES.”

Linda Palmer opened her first art studio and gallery in 1985 in Fort Smith, Arkansas. She then moved and established both in Hot Springs in 1919 where she currently owns and manages the Linda Palmer Gallery/Studio at 800B Central Ave. Palmer earned a college degree in music before she went back to school in 1980 to focus on art at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith (then known as Westark Community College). She has continued her study of art in her travels to seen original art in major museums around the world., and competing in juried art exhibits. Her art work has been chosen for numerous competitive exhibits, it is in permanent collections across the country, Europe and China. She was awarded “signature Status” by the Colored Pencil Society of America in 2006, which entitles the member to use the initials “CPSA” in their signature.

Africa brought its own riot of personalities and views to Linda. On a recent trip there she began exploring the wildlife in its natural environment, bringing to her drawings her own statement about the integral relationship of the two. She describes this: "I have experienced each landscape and observed each animal that I paint. This helps me share with the viewer the peacefulness, the mystery, and the reverence I feel in the presence of nature."