Holly Lane

While pondering the nature of frames, I found some illuminated manuscripts in the University library, and saw how the borders visually commented on the text, sometimes even spoofing the text.  From this discovery I realized that a frame could be many things; it could be a commentary, an informing context, an environment, a fanfare, a shelter, it could extent movement, it could be a conceptual or formal elaboration, it could embody ancillary ideas, it could be like a body that houses and expresses the mind, and many other rich permutations.  From that point I began to create pieces that fused frame and painting, with some pieces having doors that open and close over paintings to suggest; contingency, potentiality, future, past, or cause and effect.

To experience the space of a painting we project our minds into the painting, consequently I see pictorial space as mind space.  The spatial qualities of sculpture exist in our own physical space; we walk around it, proportion our bodies to it - in part it is apprehended or 'seen' by the body.  By fusing sculptural frames with pictorial images I hope to address both modes of aesthetic perception. 

Some re-occurring themes are: interspecies compassion, philosophical proofs of animal cognition (e.g. the correction of errors, pretense, and awareness of other minds), veiled symbolism, re-presenting women from a woman artist's perspective, exploring the hidden implications, or the backstory of myths, eco-psychology and nature mysticism.

In addition to the frame/painting pieces, in recent years I have begun a series of purely sculptural pieces of gilded carved wood.  Each gold sculpture starts solely with the relationships of forms and shapes guided by a love of proportion.  Only when the sculpture is complete do I see the iconographical and philosophical sources that subconsciously fed my decisions and creative process.  Body-like the gilding layers a radiant skin onto the form.   

Visually, I am drawn to; architecture, light on water, ecclesiastical furniture, clouds, lace, freak vegetables, models of the internal organs of various species, the contours of soft serve ice cream, stalactites, stalagmites, fungi, crowded forms, sooty lines, diffused edges and evening light.