Mixed-media artist Holly Harrison’s art training began in poetry, and it continues to inform her creative process. In her Poetic Grid series, she alternates fields of color with fields of collage; and meaning is created and gleaned through the resonant conversations that occur between them. The collage elements she uses are a mix of meaningful and random: shopping lists, vintage comics, book and magazine pages, junk mail, her daughter’s early doodles, and cut-up pieces of her husband’s works on paper. These elements bring with them a sense of story, which she obscures with washes of paint. What remains is mysterious, an impression or hint that asks the viewer to look more closely.
A second series focuses on the interplay between the organic shapes and fluidity of birds and the geometry of repeated horizontal lines. Harrison began working with bird imagery years ago, inspired by the Wallace Stevens poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Over time, her engagement with birds has led her to appreciate their strength as well as their fragility in the face of human impact and climate change.
Harrison lives and works in Concord, MA. Her artwork has been featured at galleries and museums throughout the country and is held in private and corporate collections nationally and internationally.
