Rising at 4 a.m., Linda Widstrand and her husband enjoy coffee and an oatmeal breakfast. It’s a slow, peaceful start to the day before the couple wakes their 13-year-old daughter for school and head out to work.

“I try to go slow and look at things when I am driving to work,” says the contemplative Lunenburg abstract artist.

While Widstrand works part-time at Kohl’s, her full-time passion is art.

“Art doesn’t always pay, but it’s not a hobby. It’s life,” she says, “I don’t know that abstract art is always marketable, but I do it because I love it.”

The DeCordova Museum has positioned about 20 of Widstrand’s paintings in the corporate world of Boston. This exposure sometimes leads to a sale.

“It’s not easy to buy art supplies, so I like to sell things. Then I can buy more supplies,” explains Widstrand.

Widstrand will often work all day in her studio accompanied by an eclectic beat of music.

“I listen to opera, blues, rock, Swedish, old Finnish orchestras, anything we have. Music is abstract is itself, and it evokes a feeling,” she says. Often her work is inspired by classical music.

Widstrand’s voice is quiet, calm. Part of this contentment is from overcoming a life-threatening condition, hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, since age 18.

“Having come through surgeries and a shunt that has malfunctioned, I pay attention to my creativity,” says Widstrand, who takes great pleasure in spending time in her attic studio.

“It’s a beautiful studio,” Widstrand describes. “The ceiling is raised, and there are sky lights. The chimney is exposed all the way to the ceiling. There is gorgeous brick, where I hang my paintings.”

Her home is also the inspiration for a collection of art called the Closet Series. Using many layers of mixed media and paint, Widstrand symbolizes the closets in a house for keeping tangible objects and figurative compartments in the mind, where thoughts and memories are kept.

“This old house has giant closets that I can walk into,” explains Widstrand. “Once I was doing a grid, and I realized it looked like one of my closets.”

Built after World War II, her Lunenburg home was originally owned by the Baldwin sisters, who received the house as a gift from their father.

“The sisters never married, and there is still a ‘B’ on the knocker,” says Widstrand, who is only the home’s third proprietor.

Widstrand doesn’t think the sisters would mind her painting in their home since the women used to hold soirées with musicians from the arts community. 

One of Widstrand’s favorite pieces, “Shutter Lady,” is painted on the shutters from her house. The images are made from cut outs of homemade papers and wax. Widstrand puts the wax under the paper, so it glues it down.

“The woman pictured just came out of nowhere,” says Widstrand. “I think she’s a Baldwin sister.”

Widstrand works in many mediums: Oil, watercolor, print making, sculpture.

“I just can’t leave anything alone. I know a lot of artists like that. They just jump from one thing to another. It makes life interesting,” she says.

Primarily an abstract artist, Widstrand says that she can draw well realistically.

“If you see my painting of Fitchburg’s ‘Saima Park’ in person and the moon is shining through the window, the most fantastic light comes off of it in a dark room,” she says. “People have offered to buy it, but my husband won’t let me sell it. It’s in our dining room.”

However, one of her favorite methods is the encaustic, also known as hot wax painting, which involves using heated beeswaxto which colored pigmentsare added. The liquid/paste is then applied to a surface — usually prepared wood, though canvasand other materials are often used.

She recently wrapped up a show, Encaustic Notes — New Paintings,” at Indian Hill Music Center in Littleton.

Using the encaustic method, she explains, allows one to write poetry on paper and cover it with wax. Then words can be scratched off so that only some of them show.

When painting with wax, she has to paint fast because wax melts fast.

“You have to keep your board warm,” she explains. “I taught myself how to do this from a book. Then I took a workshop to perfect it. Then I bought the equipment. I don’t even have to think about it.”

Widstrand’s husband built a hood over her utility table so that when she heats wax, she does not breathe in the fumes.

“One of the worst fumes you can get out of burning wax is formaldehyde,” she says. “Then when we mix in oil paint, you are mixing in chemicals. You don’t want to breathe this in when the fumes start burning.”

She buys her wax from a pharmaceutical company because it’s less expensive than buying directly from an encaustic paint supplier.

“I find ways to make my own things. My own formulas,” says Widstrand.

“My grandfather collected junk such as copper,” she says. “I used to build spaceships and go to Mars all of the time.”

Her Finnish grandfather not only provided the materials but also Widstrand’s inspiration through gardening and walking in the woods where they would identify trees together.

The creativity of other artists in Lunenburg, who were brought together by the Lunenburg librarian, also inspires her.

“Art connects community,” she says. “It brings people together. They talk. They drink wine.”

This connection is why Widstrand and other local artists want to build an Arts Center in the old primary school building in Lunenburg.

“We want to take it over and renovate it and make it the Lunenburg Arts Center,” she says.

In the meantime, Widstrand takes it slow, savoring each day in which she can meditate through art. She says her friends can always tell when she’s been painting all day and slipping into a meditative frame.

“I can’t talk very well when I am going on the other side of the brain,” she says. “You don’t know where the time has gone and you forget to eat.”

Such are the days of abstract artist, Linda Widstand.

Linda Widstand is a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art with a BFA in Painting in 1992. She received honors in Drawing and Collage. She is currently a member of the Lunenburg Arts Center and the Central Mass. Women's Caucus for Art. For more information, visit http://www.llarts.net/biography.htm.