Linda Holloway's paintings evolve through intuition, consideration and contemplation during the long process of their making. She is preoccupied with ephemeral ideas: the origins of thought, societal relationships and the accumulation of cultural associations. Her work taps into an inherently visual inner world, composed of symbols and images, collected and stored in the memory and subconscious.
Holloway’s complex technique creates chemical reactions and textural disparities that add depth to the surface of her paintings. Throughout every distinct series, she creates the illusion that we are looking through innumerable layers: that, rather than a flat surface behind the obvious forms, there is a vast, swimming space also filled with information waiting to be uncovered.
The Cultural Gleaning series arose from a technical device that Holloway used during her studies at Elam. With a multitude of compositional ideas, forms and symbols jostling for her attention during her days in the studio, she developed large ‘notation' boards that she used to visually record these ideas. She intended that some of these studies would go on to become larger pieces, not that the boards would ever be shown. However, she found that these random collections of disjointed images were often as compelling to visitors to her studio as the finished works.
As she recognised the significance of these intricate and wayward compositions, Holloway began the process of developing forms that reflected how our thoughts bump up against each other and arrange themselves in apparently spontaneous ways. The inherent randomness of the original boards conflicts with the artistic rigour required to make pieces that are deliberate and coherent. The artist accordingly took a significant amount of time to transition this random or unintentional eclecticism into an intentional body of work.
Holloway is fastidious about allowing adequate time for contemplation, analysis and re-consideration of the different aspects of each painting as it progresses. Beginning with a clear idea of the work, she plans and holds multiple layers in her mind from the early phase through to the completion of the piece several months later.
These carefully rendered base layers will eventually be obscured by subsequent layers. Compositions come together gradually, bringing into focus the elements that grow from the initial idea: "Not all forms or surfaces can appear in the ‘front’ but those that appear as traces or memory are equally important, creating the rich complexity that rewards close attention…without them the end result would be shallow".
Holloway seems to view these works as almost representational, describing them as depicting the “landscape of the mind”. Her work attempts to get past the subjective nature of thought processes, to find a visual language that can be used to communicate the commonalities around the exploration and development of ideas.
view exhibition