Holly Harrison

Holly Harrison in her Concord, MA studio.

Mixed-media artist Holly Harrison’s art training began in poetry, and it continues to inform her creative process. Her Poetic Grid series is comprised of semi-abstract compositions that are akin to visual poems. Fields of color alternate with fields of collage; and meaning is created and gleaned through the resonant conversations that occur between them. The collage papers she uses are both meaningful and random: shopping lists, vintage comics, book and magazine pages, junk mail, her daughter’s early doodles, and even 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.  “I’m starting to focus my bird paintings on murmurations,” she says. “I would like for people to stand before an expanse of birds, to see their wildness and beauty, and to be reminded that they are worth protecting.”

Harrison lives and works in Concord, MA. She received an MA in creative writing from The City College of New York and a BA from Wesleyan University. Her artwork has been featured at galleries and museums throughout the country and is held in private and corporate collections nationally and internationally. Additionally, she has curated two well-received shows at the Concord Center for the Visual Arts, where she was subsequently invited to join the Board of Trustees.

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