Leaving 2026

Over the last two years, many of my images have involved splitting the figures in the frame. I am now asking the paint to play as vital a role in defining the finished image as the photo, or the parts of the collage that aren’t paint, like the eyes here, or the black cloud.  The painted part of the piece is telling a part of the story that is unfolding.  In this case, the story is about two people who are splitting up—a couple, friends, family, whenever two people who have been closely bonded break up—and the paint moves our eyes across the split, as well as the black paint flowing down the woman’s face, representing tears.  I see the figure on the left being female, and the figure on the right being male, and both are terribly sad.

Mouse House 2026

 

Recently my 5 year old grandson came to visit.  He spent much of the weekend outside, alone, constructing a fortress made from the dog's water bucket and all the loose bricks he could find in the yard. I told him there were mice inside--a family of five--and we proceeded to push food into the edifice so they could have something to eat. After he returned home, I asked Gemini to help me reconstruct the house with mice included.  I had never done any imaging with AI before, and I was absolutely floored at what it could do. That's pretty much what his building looked like, plus the mice.  I know everyone out there is thinking "Oh Holly Holly! where have you been??" but it is absolutely magical.  I tried Gemini on my desktop where my over 200,000 photos are stored, and got almost no results(this was done on my iPad). It kept suggesting I use Photoshop, so that put a kink in my creative flow since I work exclusively on my desktop. I don't know if this is something I can use as a tool with my work, or if it keeps me too much in my head, which is not where the magic happens.  I have made images with photoshop that were stand-alones, and I liked them, but they never had the power of the"handmade" pieces.  When I teach, I tell my students to listen to their hands, and leave their thoughts at the door.  So I'm not sure if this is just another fancier photoshop or if because of the ease and speed of it, perhaps it will open some new doors. stay tuned.

Hungry 2009

                                                                     Original 

Repainted top and bottom

 I made this image in 2009.  It was about hunger and not having enough to eat.  The man’s body refers to kwashiorkor “A severe protein malnutrition causing fluid retention(edema), a distended abdomen, lethargy, hair and skin changes and an enlarged liver”. His body is made from a photo of dried and cracked mud. The mouth on his legs, along with the apple on this knee, all speak to-this hunger. The top and bottom borders I made using the inside of a security envelope for its beautiful blue pattern.  You can imagine my surprise when, recently I went to pull "Hunger" out of my storage for an exhibit in San Diego and found that the entire bottom and top blue borders had gone completely white, faded to nothing. Fortunately for me. I have a very talented and capable  husband, who when asked if he could fix the problem of the white borders,said, "Sure, no problem", and he did, painting in the top and bottom in a beautiful system of alternating marks.  He said he loved doing it, and wanted to be my studio assistant, although he is an artist in his own right so I doubt that will happen anytime soon: Robert Wilson Art (Link to his website).

Crow with Spots 2025

One of the things I teach when I do mixed media workshops is how to do transfers--meaning taking  something from one place--a photo, paint, graphite, marker, text, magazine images--and transferring it to another surface.  Over the years, mostly serendipitously,  I've learned many ways to do these transfers. When I first started doing transfers it was possible to take an inkjet transparency, print it out in your ink jet printer, apply a little polymer medium, smack it down on your substrate, and viola--it transferred. However, in this time of rapidly changing everything, it stopped working.  The formula changed, and we had to go to laser printers to do our very difficult, fingerprint removing process of doing a transfer.  Things changed again, other ways to do transfers developed, and as soon as I would teach one class a transfer process, the materials would disappear or nothing would work quite right.  Mostly recently I discovered, by accident, that Hammermill made a lovely double sided glossy paper for laser printers, and these prints transferred like a house afire.  It was quite wonderful, but short lived. When I went to Amazon to order the paper, it turned out that now you could only order 2400 sheets at a time if you wanted that specific paper. I ended up ordering a strange Koala Pearl glossy paper, and that's what I did Crow with Spots with.

Angry Rabbit 2025

 ”Angry Rabbit” is a “clean up” painting.  My studio, after several weeks of working, was pretty much a wreck.  Once you really start working, it’s just hard to stop to put things away.  Opened boxes of photo paper, the floored littered with scraps of paper, images that had been cut up and discarded, painted panels, folders of photos, stacks of painted paper and on and on. Finally, with all the chaos, it was time to clean up. But that never happens.  For the next week I found myself making image after image, almost effortlessly—anything to keep from cleaning up. 

Girl with Wolf 2010

Earlier this summer, two of our closest friends decided to move from Santa Fe to be closer to their family(see Cubana Conversation ).  I inherited a number of my paintings from their collection, and this was one of them, always a favorite of mine.  Of course, this is Little Red Riding Hood, being tricked not by a wolf, but by my blue heeler, Plez.  I love the painting for its wild colors, the innocence of Red Riding Hood, and Plez's leering canine face. Their bodies were made from paint peels-dried acrylic paint poured out, dried, then peeled back up and applied. The little girl's almost beating heart, and the wolf's large red mass that could be his intestines or a very large heart, both paint peels on top of paint peels. Her little black Mary Janes and his slipper like footwear finish these fairytale portraits.
 

Painted Horse

 In 2022 I was notified that two of my pieces, “Painted Horse” and “Horse with Storm” had been selected to be installed at the new UNM Hospital tower, here in Albuquerque, NM.  When a piece has been selected for a public art installation it has to be framed and hung in very specific ways—plexiglass covering the surface and special anti theft hangers so it can go on the wall and not be removed.  I think this piece has been hung in a patient’s room on the third floor, but I’m not sure since I didn’t do the hanging myself and the grand opening will be in October.  I like to think that whoever has this piece in their room will enjoy sharing their space with this friendly, colorful guy, and perhaps, in some subtle way, help that person heal.