Carolyn Holman

My life along the path of creating is a playful, winding dance of hide and seek. The elusive sense of inner freedom seems to be just behind the next door. Painting is where I carefully begin unhinging and removing the hiding places within myself and within each new work. I respond to what both delights and disrupts me, being nudged out of the trance of predictability or the trap of perfection. A painting is the intersection of this conversation. I grew up and live in the Pacific NW.

I have a tenderness and gratitude towards my best friends, most of which will always be animals. I feel the affinity and the deep, knowing presence of love which nature holds, and forever inseparable from. My impulse to create is an unfolding attempt to bring forth these wordless glimpses into visual form. The challenge is to select and allow the colors, shapes, and textures to have their voice within only one painting at a time. Finding ever-changing color and texture combinations enlivens me. I enjoy depth and its suggestion of finding treasures. Bits of paper are puzzled in or embedded as punctuation between layers of paint and clear mediums. Remaining curious, I shine a light into hidden corners of the unseen, bringing forth the whispers from below the surface as the visual scribe.

Currently, I live in Milwaukie, Oregon in my home studio, a single-wide 1970’s mobile home. My practice evolves as a continuing self-exploration into what it means to be courageous. In addition to good food and good coffee, I survive on morsels of subtle humor found in unlikely places.