Holly Edwards
Holly Edwards is a self-taught visual artist from Lakefield Ontario exploring painting and mixed media collage. She has pursued art all her life, as a child encouraged to focus her energy on painting and drawing, to a teenager attending a specialized visual arts high school program in Unionville Ontario, to having a dedicated sketchbook practice as she pursued Philosophy at McMaster University and beyond. Holly has taken numerous workshops from local artists in addition to classes at the Haliburton Collage of Art, Women’s Studio Workshop (NY), Centre for Book Arts (NY), and the North Vancouver Arts Centre.
Holly’s current work focuses on Painting and Mixed media collage; she finds that one informs the other. Holly uses various printmaking techniques to create collage papers, including Mono-prints, Suminigashi and Linocuts, and applies the collaged papers over a painted underlayer. She enjoys painting and works with both acrylic and oils, as well as other mixed media (such as water colour, oil sticks, soft pastels, charcoal).
Holly has completed two artist residencies: Luminous Bodies at Artscape Gibraltar Point in Toronto (2018) and a self-directed artist residency at Bareneed Studios in Newfoundland (2019).
Holly has participated in numerous group and juried shows in addition to several solo art shows. Solo shows include “Collaged” 2023 at the Scugog Council for the Arts, “Folding-In” 2019 at Ludmila Gallery, “I’ve Used Up All My Courage” 2019 at the Art Gallery of Bancroft, and “Figurative”2018 at ACME gallery.
Galleries where Holly has shown her work in group shows include the Scugog Council for the Arts (Port Perry), the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Art Gallery of Bancroft, Station Gallery (Whitby), Clarington Art Centre, Northumberland Gallery, John. B Aird Gallery (Toronto), Gallery 1313 (Toronto), Propellor Art Gallery (Toronto), Agnes Jamieson Gallery (Minden), Colborne Gallery (Fenelon Falls), Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (Clarington), Meta4 Gallery (Port Perry). the Japanese Paper Place (Etobicoke), Kawartha Art Gallery (Lindsay), ACME Art and Sailboat Company, and Ludmila Gallery (Peterborough), Ecco Gallery (Lakefield)
“My art practice is a process that involves creating art daily, often working in a series to express an idea or emotion. I work with both acrylic and oil paints, as well as various materials to create collage.
Prior to the pandemic my art was primarily focused on acrylic and oil painting with some mixed media (for instance soft pastels or charcoal combined with acrylic paint). During the pandemic I found myself at home with my children and little time to work in my studio. I adapted by working on the dining table cutting out life drawing studies and works on paper to create collage with added monoprints and/or Japanese papers. This collage investigation became an important part of my practice and today I enjoy creating my own handprinted papers with Lino-prints, Gell plates, and Suminagashi marbling. I have found that these collage pieces inform my paintings, and there are similarities between the two in terms of layering of colours and texture. ”