Linda Kukuk, a life-time resident of the Oklahoma City area, is a self-taught artist.  Since the early 1960’s she has participated in numerous art shows, specializing in scratch board art.  She and her husband have traveled extensively throughout Africa, Europe, Russia, and the South Pacific, which has given her a myriad of interesting subjects to paint and draw. 

Her retirement as Chief of the Commander’s Protocol Office at Tinker AFB in March 2002, has given her more time to pursue her artistic endeavors.   Since then, she has added watercolor and has discovered this can also be combined with her scratchboard art. She still continues with scratchwork, but is using clayboard, which allows her to add watercolor to this traditionally “black and white” medium.   She also does watercolor paintings on textured clayboard.  Linda enjoys painting a very wide variety of subjects and considers anything to be fair game for her paper and clayboard.  As a break from the very detailed, non-forgiving medium of scratchwork, Linda enjoys relaxing by creating very colorful watercolor abstracts on smooth clayboard which she seals with a pour on high gloss polymer-resin glaze.

Being a native Oklahoman of rich Choctaw & Cherokee ancestry, and having grown up in rural Oklahoma, she especially enjoys painting Native American themes. Her Great Grandfather, Henry Pleasant Ward, was a member of the Choctaw Nation Legislature and became Judge of Atoka County. His wife, Mary, was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.  The Ward family consisted of several prosperous, well respected, leaders just previous and following Oklahoma Statehood. They are well represented in the historical book by H.F. O’Beirne, “Leaders & Leading Men of the Indian Territory, published in 1891.

Linda is a Signature member of ISSA (International Society of Scratchboard Artists). Two of her scratchworks were selected for the ISSA International Show in Vancouver BC, Canada in 2013. One of her scratchworks was selected for the ISSA International Show in Tucson in 2016, two were selected for the Show in Adelaide, Australia in 2017 and one for the Show in Berea, KY 2019.  She has won numerous awards and purchase awards for her paintings and scratchworks throughout her career.  Linda’s work has been in the Festival of Arts in Oklahoma City, as well as the OCCC Arts Festival Oklahoma, Downtown Edmond Art Festivals, Red Earth Art Shows, Cherokee Art Market in Tulsa and Oklahoma Art Guild National Shows – all juried shows.