Holly Roberts writes about her solo exhibition, For Just A Moment. Experience the show at form & concept through July 30, 2022.
Most of the work for my exhibition at form & concept was made during the lockdown, the period of just under two years where the world found itself frozen by a global pandemic. Forbidden to leave our homes except for necessities, we found ourselves without the usual social interactions. However, as an artist, and an introvert, the lockdown allowed me to get that much closer to nature.
Something that has always been important to me, nature is the one thing that I couldn’t be locked out of. I could watch the coyotes in the field behind our house as they trotted by going about their coyote business. Rabbits, always present, even more so now. And, of course, my long love affair with horses saved me when I started riding a friend’s young gelding every week.
I read about elephants walking down deserted urban streets, baboons taking over a city, deer, elk and bear showing up more freely with people out of their way. The air was becoming clean again with so little traffic to pollute it, and nature, for just a moment, was reasserting herself.
My paintings spoke of animals as mothers and fathers, taking care of us, taking care of the world. The common animals I observed on a daily basis became the vehicles for me to see a better world, a more connected world, a world where nature isn’t pushed back into the shadows. By combining paint and my photographs, I was able to make these new worlds: worlds which give me great peace and let me make my way through a very scary period of time to see the deeper, more profound meaning in what is around me.
Explore Holly Roberts; For Just A Moment.