Linda has had a multifaceted career since graduating with a degree in business from Waikato University. She is an award-winning health and safety professional, educator, artist and TEDx speaker. In March 2025, the now Melbourne-based Creative Director was diagnosed with a large acoustic neuroma.
‘Words have power.
I could spend this precious time waxing lyrical about sad statistics or tragic tales, but I’m going to celebrate instead; amazing things, and amazing people.
The human brain is an incredible thing.
It is easily the coolest and most impressive thing about someone, but generally speaking, you can’t see it directly, only indirectly.
You can see it in someone’s actions, their words, the way they move their body, and what they create in the world.
We exist within it, but also somewhere else outside of it.
We experience our entire lives and the world through it and yet it remains a complete mystery to us.
It can give life, experience delight and love or create a masterpiece. Sometimes, all at the same time.
Being diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma and needing 13 hours of brain surgery was not on my bingo card for 2025.
But at some point around the 4 week post op mark, I asked myself a simple question:
‘Is it possible to make this the best thing that has ever happened to me?’
I didn’t try to force an answer, I just let the question hover, unanswered and waited to see what would materialise from this arrangement of words.
What followed was the most prolific and creative period of my entire life, and my first exposure to the brain cancer space.
I then discovered a field that is, against all odds, on the threshold of significant breakthroughs and currently experiencing a favourable window of opportunity to find a cure and make history.
I also discovered kind, accomplished, talented and intelligent people working really hard to find a way forward.
And I discovered an opportunity to create something defiantly joyful and deliciously exuberant, and give back to the people who saved my life.
I’d like to dedicate this project to the unfathomable miracle that is the human brain and all the people who work tirelessly to understand it.
Linda 🖤’
‘Neurospicy Art’ is a 109 piece art collection created as part of Linda’s healing journey, as a thank you to those that helped save her and to give back to the brain cancer community. 100% of the profits from the ‘Neurospicy Art’ collection will support brain cancer research in Australia. The Mark Hughes Foundation is one of the beneficiaries of this project.
