Holly Roberts: 33 Years

 On January 11, 2018, the Griffin Museum opens with “Holly Roberts: 33 Years,” an exhibition of mixed media artwork by Holly Roberts.

Holly Roberts says, “I have been experimenting with different ways of making images for the past few years, but always with paint and photography as the driving forces.” Her work has continued to evolve, but she has reversed her original process of heavily overpainting the black and white silver print. She now works on top of a painted surface, developing a narrative scene with collaged photographic elements. Where earlier pieces reflected psychological or emotional undercurrents, newer works make use of familiar or iconic stories to address tougher questions about man’s effect on the land and the animals that inhabit it.

“My photographic imagery is widely varied, all the way from specific portraits of people or animals to photos of rocks, leaves, or even dead moths—material I can use to build textures and surfaces.” 

“What has resulted is a wide variety of images, still with my own view of the world at their core. “Animals, people, and people as animals are my most constant themes.  Portraits of men and women have become a larger part of what I do.  Horses, dogs, and birds are the animals I use predominantly since those are the animals I feel most connected to.  If I can find any one theme that runs through my work, it would be a subtle kind of loneliness or feeling of separateness, at times mixed with odd humor.”

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.