Local artist Fran Holt will be showing her work at the Seattle Creative Arts Center for the month of November. Holt has recently won a 4Culture grant for her work, and the show at the arts center will be a dry run for her exhibition in December at a gallery in Kirkland. The opening for her show is Nov. 9 from 6 to 9 p.m. and is titled “Running Wild: A Selection of Works From the Last Five Years.”
Photo courtesy Meleah Gibson, Seattle Creative Arts Center
Holt, a Maryland native, studied painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland and at the University of Texas in Austin. She headed west in 1989, “finding vibrant support and a cultivated population in Seattle, arriving just as grunge and the dot-com era began,” according to her biography.
Her upcoming exhibition uses, “unusual carousel horse imagery,” to explore the idea that, “happiness and energy are contagious; that being in a room filled wall to wall with bright color and swirling motion positively influences any person who enters that room,” Holt explains. The exhibit will feature, “large 8’x 4′ reinforced panels, painted and hung as polyptychs extending 12’ or more, depicting the hyper-imaginary lives of carousel horses and told from the horses’ point of view.”
From Holt:
…They are doing extraordinary things such as dancing beneath a full moon or snorkeling with hippocampi. The paintings are physical creatures that take up space and are tactile, from the wood panels to the swirling paint. Scale is important – the paintings dominate the space like a forest of ancient redwoods. Like actual carousel horses, the panels remind the viewer of the physicality of experience, simultaneously having a presence as large, wooden creatures themselves. When the viewer stands before a huge, brightly colored painting, s/he becomes aware of the floor, walls, one’s own body, bathed in reflected color. At first glance, the paintings are recognizable as real-world depictions of familiar objects.
To read more about Holt’s exhibit, click here.
