Linda Andrei began her interest in art at an early age growing up in NYC. She visited museums as a child and had an opportunity to paint at The Brooklyn Museum as an adolescent where she participated in a life drawing and painting class with adults. 

Her career in art was delayed as she pursued a career in medicine. Linda became board certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiology and went on to become an Interventional Cardiologist. In a career that spanned 30 years she spent time in Academic Medicine teaching medical residents and cardiology fellows at Mount Sinai Medical Center. She also administered the Cardiac Catheterization lab at Mount Sinai Services City Hospital Center at Elmhurst as Director. 

Finally, she went into private practice where she cared for patients with heart disease and felt she finally became a “real doctor”. 

The unfinished passion for art led her to leave her practice of medicine and begin formal training in drawing, painting and sculpture as well as printmaking and conceptual art. Linda designed her own program of study seeking out those artists who would be able to teach her the specific skills she felt she needed. This led her to study with Myron Barnstone and Alyssa Monks. She then entered the MFA program at The New York Academy of Art where she sought community and experience with practicing artists. Linda counts herself lucky to have studied with Margaret Bowland, Steven Asaal, Jenny Saville and Vincent Desiderio among others while at the academy. 

“Fieldstone was a time to reconnect with nature and my own nature. The quiet, beauty and opportunity to gain the collaborative support from the NYAA alumnae was unparalleled. Paint becomes the materialization of something that brings alchemy. There is a transfiguration of feeling and paint is the medium to carry that feeling to a point of creation. It reflects the violence in the creative struggle as well as the joy and pleasure that creation brings forth.”