CHRIS HOLLEY: Statement
An abstract/figurative painter working from memory and imagination, Chris's vivid and expressive paintings are underpinned by strong drawing skills and a sure sense of line. Her visual art relates directly or indirectly to elements of dance and music, which is due to her long and ongoing involvement with these art forms - both major inspirations for her as she responds to the three-way synergy between visual art, dance and music. Think composition, colour, contrast, texture, rhythm, pattern, the temporal… the list of shared features in this trio of art forms goes on ad infinitum.
Working in acrylic and oil, she sometimes uses household emulsion too, delighting in its rich consistency into which she can scratch and carve expressive marks into the paint surface. She also loves working big when possible, now mostly eschewing paintbrushes in favour of sponges, cloths, sticks and her hands, plus any other studio artifact that holds promise of the more unexpected mark. Disliking the confines of a set-size canvas, she always starts her paintings on unstretched canvas, later cropping to exact size and image area. Once painting is underway the canvas is continually moved from floor - to pour/spray/puddle/merge paint and then, when dry - back to easel to paint in the vertical. This frenetic and physical activity makes for a wide range of interesting marks.
Linking all Chris’s visual art is flow and lyricism, her current work a series of paintings called Rhythmical Horizons. These started life as experiments in colour combinations on small strips of canvas, her main concern at the time to observe how the colours resonated with each other. Surprised to find her eye returning to these random marks, she realised their potential to resizing and further creative development. So, working across four images selected from the original marks, she is now working to scale them up – in stages on paper - finally into larger scale paintings on canvas. Rhythmical Horizons, based on the pure abstraction of random marks, excites her creative energy as she works to amplify and simplify these images into vibrant mixed media paintings.
An abstract/figurative painter working from memory and imagination, Chris's vivid and expressive paintings are underpinned by strong drawing skills and a sure sense of line. Her visual art relates directly or indirectly to elements of dance and music, which is due to her long and ongoing involvement with these art forms - both major inspirations for her as she responds to the three-way synergy between visual art, dance and music. Think composition, colour, contrast, texture, rhythm, pattern, the temporal… the list of shared features in this trio of art forms goes on ad infinitum.
Working in acrylic and oil, she sometimes uses household emulsion too, delighting in its rich consistency into which she can scratch and carve expressive marks into the paint surface. She also loves working big when possible, now mostly eschewing paintbrushes in favour of sponges, cloths, sticks and her hands, plus any other studio artifact that holds promise of the more unexpected mark. Disliking the confines of a set-size canvas, she always starts her paintings on unstretched canvas, later cropping to exact size and image area. Once painting is underway the canvas is continually moved from floor - to pour/spray/puddle/merge paint and then, when dry - back to easel to paint in the vertical. This frenetic and physical activity makes for a wide range of interesting marks.
Linking all Chris’s visual art is flow and lyricism, her current work a series of paintings called Rhythmical Horizons. These started life as experiments in colour combinations on small strips of canvas, her main concern at the time to observe how the colours resonated with each other. Surprised to find her eye returning to these random marks, she realised their potential to resizing and further creative development. So, working across four images selected from the original marks, she is now working to scale them up – in stages on paper - finally into larger scale paintings on canvas. Rhythmical Horizons, based on the pure abstraction of random marks, excites her creative energy as she works to amplify and simplify these images into vibrant mixed media paintings.