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

“Holly Roberts: 33 Years” will showcase in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA from January 11 – March 4, 2018. An opening reception (Free for all) takes place on Thursday, January 18, 2018, 7 – 8:30 p.m. There will be a gallery walk/talk with the artist at 6 PM on January 18, 2018. The gallery walk/talk is free for members and is $10 for nonmembers.

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.”  She goes on to say, “I have also begun to work with transfers, something I have taught for years but never really integrated into my own work. I am seduced by the magic of taking something and making it live as something else.  And, most recently, I have gone back to working with oil paints, something I gave up 13 years ago in favor of acrylics.”

“What has resulted is a wide variety of images, still with my own view of the world at their core, says Roberts. “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.”

Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum says, “In the trilogy of shows opening in Winchester on January 11, 2018, if there is a common element that links each to the other, it is the ability of the artists to disclose personal psychologies without vulnerability. It is this show of openness that draws us to the artists and their art-making process.”

Holly Roberts, born in Boulder, Colorado, earned an M.F.A. from Arizona State University, Tempe, in 1981. Her artworks mixing photography with paint and other media are found in close to forty corporate and public collections, exhibited nationally and internationally, and have been published in three major monographs. She has twice received National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Holly currently lives and works in Corrales, New Mexico, with her husband, Robert Wilson.

Known for its Native American heritage, New Mexico, surrounded by desert, is a place where indigenous ideology and Western beliefs merge, creating a magical area filled with a sense of history and spirituality — elements essential to Roberts and her work. In 1980, while living on a Zuni reservation in New Mexico, Roberts quietly painted on photographs she had taken of her husband, children, animals and friends. The results of her efforts was startling, as her work was embraced across the country for its innovative style and psychological dramas which confront the anguish, joy, challenges and complexities involved in daily life.

Holly Roberts is represented by Tilt Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ, Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, Morpeth Contemporary, Hopewell, NJ, Turner Carroll Gallery, Santa Fe, NM and Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, IL.

My website

My blog

Catalog for Holly Roberts: 33 Years