The Bluff - Oil on Canvas
30x30
|
Lake Paintings"When I learned of my Aunt's and Uncle's plan to retire together and open a market down the road from their house, I was encouraged to do something that I had been wanting to do for a long time. The result is a collection of the views around Keuka Lake."
- HMCAS These eleven paintings are currently on display in Pulteney, New York in Welch's Hometown Market. |
A Painting a Day
As a student, HMCAS was challenged to do a painting a day - and she did. The result was stacks and stacks of canvases. These days, when things get off track, and life gets in the way, she goes back to basics. She goes back to A Painting a Day.
HOPE oil on canvas 13 x 14
Hope
Day upon day, holding on and not letting go creates mental illness. How does one judge what to keep and what to get rid of? Overwhelmed and busy, value eludes us. But there is a way out. Hope is a door, and like cell division and mitochondria, we reach for it, beyond the canvas, beyond the frame.
Day upon day, holding on and not letting go creates mental illness. How does one judge what to keep and what to get rid of? Overwhelmed and busy, value eludes us. But there is a way out. Hope is a door, and like cell division and mitochondria, we reach for it, beyond the canvas, beyond the frame.
|
Disposable HeritageThe big purple house on 7th Street and Visart are neighborhood icons of a time gone by. Like the dozens of cult-classic VHS tapes on Visart’s hallowed shelves, they are symbols of the arts and culture in one of Charlotte’s most eclectic neighborhoods. For decades, Visart was a motley stalwart standing in defiance against Blockbuster and later Netflix. The big purple house was like the model home for a self-declared subdivision of cool in a city that is slipping toward a bland corporate nullity.
The demolition of big purple house and Visart are just the most recent examples of Charlotte’s shockingly callous attitude toward neighborhood landmarks. Beyond that, it is an affront to a sub-culture that some of us actually value. In this collection, Holly Spruck stands up against the inevitable bull dozers. She holds up a mirror to urban renewal, and she asks at what cost do we progress into the future. Some things are worth saving. |
|
Memory PaintingsEvery time you recall a memory, they say, part of it fades. Year after year, the favorite memories lose detail until only the shadow of the essence is left. A thin, gauzy thing, like a worn-out old t-shirt or cheesecloth.
The importance of securing our memories becomes clear as we get older. Sometimes it is a song, a smell, sometimes it is a place, or a feeling that brings us back to a moment. This new style evolved for me: the pallet knife, the process of starting with the detailed contour drawings and working my way to the point where, with slabs of color and no straight lines, no crisp definitions, the expressionist essence is let loose. The hazy, fuzzy aspect of these paintings fits my mental state, as my unfocused mind jumbles with non-linear thought. It is the unconscious and the subconscious rather than the conscious, that helps me find the organization in the seemingly random, that helps me find the thread of calm in the chaos. I think the unfocused mind is as interesting and dangerous as the focused mind. Our modern times are full of disillusionment, abandonment, betrayal - things are either moving too fast, or they are not moving fast enough, the monotony of mid-life facing me down. I response with blobs of color that might explode. Letting go of the need for control and order sets me free to explore what is more important that control and order - something transcendent and otherworldly. "One should not draw what one sees, but what one saw". -Edvard Munch |
|
Charlotte buildings and cityscapeThe city is booming. New buildings, new museums, new sculpture. Holly created a series of paintings to try and capture a snapshot of this changing landscape.
The Duke Energy Center, which she affectionately calls the "Cheese Grater". The Bank of America Corporate Center, which she nicknamed the "Birthday Cake". And Hearst Tower, which she refers to as the "Juke Box". |
|
Brain Hiccup drawings and paintingsThe repetitive motion of drawing parallel lines, contours, gives the brain a chance to rest. My eye focuses on the contours, inside and out, the thickness of the lines, the white lines of negative space, the blacks lines of positive space. It is a dance I do with the space, carving it up just so, creating an object or a place out of lines, out of rhythm, out of repetition. Like music. Reverberations. For a person who suffers from anxiety, the repetition is soothing, calming the jittery eye, the shaky hand, the wobbly mind.
The detail in the object is drawn, adding detail upon detail until they start to overflow. Then I start stripping them away, until I find what it is about the object that is its essence. I often repeat the the drawings until I understand it, until I finally find the core of the thing, the essence of the place. Once I have done that, I may be ready to paint it. "I Keep a large number of detail that will later go." -Francois Pompon |
