Loie Hollowell (born 1983) is an American painter. She was born and raised in Northern California. She currently lives and works in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Hollowell creates abstract biomorphic paintings that suggest spirituality and sexuality. Hollowell's work is inspired by tantric painting traditions, and she has been compared to the artist

Georgia O'Keeffe Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of Amer ...

Education

Hollowell holds a BA from the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

, and an MFA in Painting from

Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a public research university in Richmond, Virginia. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virginia in 1854. In 1968, the Virgini ...

Work

Hollowell's paintings have been described as "abstract body landscapes" by Martha Schwendener of the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

. Known for paintings and drawings that explore the bodily landscape, Loie Hollowell's practice exists in the liminal space between abstraction and figuration, otherworldly and corporeal. Originating in autobiography, her work explores themes of sexuality, pregnancy and birth. Hollowell's geometric compositions use symbolic shapes such as the mandorla, ogee and lingam to build her distinctive visual lexicon. In referencing her own personal experiences, Hollowell's paintings are at once personal and universal in their fierce vulnerability. Her use of symmetry - often anchoring her compositions in a central, singular axis - relates her paintings to her own body as well as the natural world. For Hollowell, the scale of her work is particularly significant as she creates each work in direct correlation with the size of the body part depicted, be it her head, breasts, groin, or entire body. Furthering her exploration of physicality, Hollowell adheres sculpted forms onto her canvases to confound expectations of painting. Hollowell’s protruding forms are blended seamlessly, forcing the viewer to move around the canvas to determine whether it is an illusory flat surface or three-dimensional. This adds a playful, performative aspect to her work that speaks to Hollowell’s masterful manipulation of space, surface, light and shadow. With strong colors, varied textures, and geometric symmetry, Hollowell’s practice is situated in lineage with the work of American artists like Agnes Pelton, Georgia O’Keeffe and Judy Chicago. She is also greatly influenced by the work of the California Light and Space Movement as well as Neo-Tantric painters like

Ghulam Rasool Santosh Ghulam Rasool Santosh (1929 – March 10, 1997), also known as G. R. Santosh, was a prominent Indian painter and poet. He was best known for his themes inspired by Kashmir Shaivism. In 1979, he became the recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award for hi ...

and

Biren De Biren De (1926–2011) was an Indian painter of modern art, known for his paintings with tantric influences. His paintings were characterized by symmetrical patterns of geometry and the presence of tantric symbols such as mandala, phallus and ...

Solo exhibitions

* Loie Hollowell: Lost¸ National Gallery of Saskatchewan, Canora, Canada, December 20, 2008 – January 20, 2009. * Loie Hollowell: I Repeat Myself, Gregory Kondos Gallery, Sacramento City College, October 1–31, 2008. * Loie Hollowell: Middle Ground¸ Richmond International Airport, Virginia, November 1, 2011 – February 27, 2012. * Loie Hollowell: Middle Ground¸ Richmond International Airport, Virginia, November 1, 2011 – February 27, 2012. * Loie Hollowell: Mother Tongue, Feuer/Mesler, New York, October 27–December 18, 2016. * Loie Hollowell: Point of Entry, Pace Palo Alto, California, September 20–November 2, 2017. * Loie Hollowell: Dominant / Recessive, Pace Gallery, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, August 28–September 20, 2018. * Loie Hollowell: Switchback, Pace Gallery, 15C Entertainment Building, 30 Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong, March 27–May 31, 2018. * Loie Hollowell: Space Between, A Survey of Ten Years, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, January 21 to August 11, 2024

Group exhibitions

References

External links

Official website

Pace Gallery, Loie Hollowell
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hollowell, Loie Living people 1983 births 21st-century American women painters 21st-century American painters American feminist artists American contemporary painters American surrealist artists American erotic artists American abstract artists Women surrealist artists