New home...

I've decided to move my blog. Thank you to everyone who's supported me here, I hope you'll continue to enjoy my art and be mildly amused by my idle musings over on the new site. I'd love to hear what you think of it so please feel free to use the contact form or leave a comment.

Ta,

Holly

You can now find me HERE

The full address of my site is https://hollyholtart.com



It takes courage...

"I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it"

 - Georgia O'Keeffe

 A few years ago, the library was having a clear out and I nabbed this book before it was binned. It's one I'd taken out countless times when I fell in love with Georgia O'Keeffe as a student. When I got home and flicked through it, I found my old paint spillages from using it as a reference in the studio and I could just make out all my old stamped return dates underneath the replacement label.





It was one of those finds that you just stumble upon. I wasn't looking for it but there it was and I just wondered if it might be the same copy. And it was. Seeing it again brought back a lot of memories and reminded me of the impact O'Keeffe's art had on me when I was younger. I hadn't thought about her in a long time.

 

I'd chosen Georgia for a project that I can't recall the theme of now, but it was her smooth style of painting and her close up perspective that caught my attention as a teenager. I loved her take on zooming in on something small, like a flower, and magnifying it to abstract proportions, I loved her skyscrapers, painted from human eye view in dizzy converging verticals and of course, her animal skulls.

 

Summer Days, 1936, Oil on canvas

Back then I didn't actually draw or paint any skulls. There were plenty of bones in the box of "organic forms" we had in the studio but they looked difficult and I wasn't confident enough to try. (I wish I had, I'd probably be better at them by now...) I was more taken with emulating the sharp-edged shadows and invisible brush strokes. Sadly, I don't have any of my O'Keeffe rip-offs as I dropped out and never went back to collect anything, but I've got the book. It smells, evocatively, of Daler-Rowney System 3 acrylic paint, it's tattered and sellotaped together and I could easily just replace it but that would mean the magic would be gone.

 

From the Faraway, Nearby, 1937, Oil on canvas

Georgia said that "to create one's world in any of the arts takes courage" and after all these years and many re-reads, I think I'm finally starting to get brave...

Georgia O'Keeffe in 1931, photographed by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz

The book in question is Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986: Flowers in the Desert by Britta Benke

You can buy it HERE 



 

Time is short and the art, long...

A question I get asked a lot is, "how long did that take?" I'm not sure why timescales intrigue people so much, perhaps it's to do with our finite lifespans, but I think it's probably because we're so used to the immediacy of photography that we're fascinated with why someone would spend a long time creating an image that's just to look at.

It's a question I rarely ask other people or think about with my own drawings. Minutes, hours or years, it's just worth doing and I've never timed anything, never know what time or day I started or finished, so it's a question I can't really answer. I tend to just make up what feels like an adequate amount, I don't know if they're impressed by quickly or aeons...

All I can really say is that I posses the oxymoronic qualities of both drawing very slowly and having a short attention span. There are times when I frustrate myself with my approach and there are times when I'm glad of it. When I work slowly, things are more considered, done with care, there's plenty of thinking time. When I work quickly, there's energy and immediacy to it. When I stop regularly, things change and evolve as I go along, it's organic. When I work quickly, I capture a moment, a snapshot of what's in my head right then.

These skulls all took about half an hour each, I didn't want to fuss them or make them look like photos, they're sketchy and imperfect but I like them (except the green one, green biro can go back to whatever hole it crawled out from, goodbye.) But they're procrastination, Nero fiddling whilst Rome is burning, I've got loads of detailed, lengthy drawings that I should be working on, people are waiting and they'll want to know how long it took...how long is a piece of string? (according to a ten year old I was chatting to recently it's "probably about 30 centimetres," I might just use that as my answer in future.)

I never try to find you...

I've been away. Physically, mentally, metaphorically...but I feel like I'm back now with the completion of this. Creativity comes with it's own set of Faustian terms and conditions. It drags you out to sea sometimes. Or leaves you on the shore when you wanted to get in the boat.

This is part one of two commissioned drawings and the only instruction for this one was to contain two skulls and have ravens involved somewhere. When I draw for other people I see it as a shared idea and what they had in mind when they asked for it is probably definitely very different to what I had in mind...but if you aren't specific, you get something from the recesses of my brain and this idea was already half formed, I was just waiting for the remnants to catch up. I like to weave a bit of a narrative, so it's anthropomorphic skeletons caught between life and death, with a floral vibe. I can't put it any simpler than that...

I hide them everywhere...

Here is my anonymous entry for A Letter in Mind, a charity exhibition for The National Brain Appeal. The art is currently on display at the Oxo Tower (gallery@oxo) on the South Bank, London. The name of the person who did the work (still won't refer to myself as an artist) was only revealed when the piece had sold so I couldn't show it until now - yes, someone delved into the depths of their sanity and paid good money for this! It's for charity...I'll let you off. 

The theme was "A Sense of Place" and at first glance you're probably wondering what in the name of all that's right and good this jar of critters could mean? It's probably easier to share a bit of the description I sent in with it to be given to the buyer...

‘Lay o’ers to catch meddlers’ is an old Lancashire saying that my Nanna used to use. Literally, it refers to a type of trap but is used in dialect as a warning to a meddlesome person who really ought to mind their own business, an answer to the question “what’s in that drawer, Nanna?” So why the weird thimbles? Well, as a little girl, this is what I imagined a lay o’er to be; the thimbles from the sewing box with beaks and spindly legs (I’m scared of spiders) to run out and nip prying fingers. So my ‘sense of place’ is my past, my roots, my broad Lancashire accent, the source of my imagination, the child within, the dark corner of the cupboard where I keep my secrets – with its own special brand of security guard.

The exhibition is still running until 1st October 2017 and you can also view and purchase the artwork HERE.

None of us can tell...

I'm not a witch or a hippy, I don't believe that quartz can save your soul (I don't believe in souls for that matter) nor do I think that Martians built the pyramids in thirty seconds, but the tiny illustrations on a tarot deck have enchanted me since childhood. I haven't a clue what they're meant to tell you about life (I'm guessing bugger all) I just enjoy looking at the pictures. I suppose The Hermit resonates with me (metaphorically of course), I'm no socialite, I spend hours by myself scribbling away at black skies and if I was small enough to put a shell on my head I probably would...I think that bit is optional advice in the fortune tent. If I had a quieter mind, I might be inclined to illustrate the full set but I'll say with some certainty...unlikely.  

The Hermit, 2017, ballpoint pen on paper

To be cut adrift...

Every now and again I lose myself (not in a good way) and need something to bring me back into the solar system. Drawing nature usually sets me right so this sketchy little envelope woodpecker let me know I've still got something. And I really threw caution to the wind and got the red biro out...

Once I was in a position to re-enter the atmosphere of the ballpoint pen, I took this little tattoo request as well. It was to be inspired by The Killing Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen and needed to include a boat and a lyric. The rest was up to me.

I've always understood it as a song about death and our inexorable (and fast) journey towards it (did I say I was back in a good mood?) so we decided on the reaper in his boat. If he's got one. Has he? Since he's open to interpretation and not real and art is subjective I'm saying yes, he does. 

I liked the idea of repeating the moon so the scythe and boat both became crescents, which all fit neatly into the shape of the moon in the background. Neat doesn't come naturally to me but a plan came together on this occasion... 

Here's the original little sketch I did to throw the ideas out, for once I didn't deviate too far from the original but that's neither a good or a bad thing, just a fact. Apologies for the scrappy, ripped off Instagram pictures but the scanner is also orbiting it's own uninhabitable zone somewhere. I just wanted to talk about drawing for a bit...