HOLLY ROBERTS
Holly Roberts is known for her unconventional combination
of photography and painting. By using spatulas and rollers, she manipulates
paint on the surfaces of her black-and-white silver prints obscuring the underlying
imagery. Dennis High, Executive Director and Curator from the Center for Photographic
Arts in Carmel states, "Holly Roberts was one of the first photographers
to cover her entire photograph with paint." Roberts’ figures seem
to inhabit a world where loneliness and contemplation are constant. Her figures
have a quiet power, a psychological density. The sometimes smooth, sometimes
messy and tactile paint surfaces often allow the ghostly world of the underlying
photographs to appear. Roberts notes, "The emotional, psychological aspects
have become the biggest investigation for me…that’s the mine I’m
mining."
Holly Roberts was born in Boulder, Colorado and holds an M.F.A. from Arizona
State University. She has received two National Endowment for the Arts grants
in photography and a Ferguson Grant from the Friends of Photography in California.
She currently lives and works in Corrales, New Mexico and frequently leads
workshops for UC Extension in Santa Cruz.