Michaela Hollyfield

Michaela Hollyfield

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Degree: MA Fine Art
University: University of Wales, School of Art
Graduation Year: 2017

New Blood Art Commentary

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Michaela Hollyfield creates ambiguous landscapes using an intuitive style. Dark, moon kissed colour emanates from the work. Rushing brush strokes wield themselves through the canvas  and create organic shapes suggesting forests or a fox wreathed in a ravine of colour. Hollyfield paints atmospheric mountains, doused in quiet hues whilst another work portrays a forest as night befalls, trees stand stark against the electric blues of midnight. This journey through imagined landscapes lends the work an elusive quality, which remains captivating through the rich use of colour and the painterly attention to form.

Artist Statement

As I mature as an artist I am interested exploring the juxtaposition between abstraction and figurative art.

Almost always it is the more abstract work which resonates with people in an emotive and subconscious way. My figurative works appeal to those who prefer to be able to attribute what is on the canvas to something they recognise in their experience or surroundings.

One painting always informs another.

The enjoyment of translating an image into my own language and colour palette is arguably as interesting and compelling as creating an image from what is, initially, arbitrary mark making and intuitive process painting.

What is explored and understood in one painting can then be reimagined in another; changing the tools which are used to paint with and relying on visual memory and emotional responses.

The motifs in my work are interchangeable. Landscape and crustaceans have become part of the growing catalogue of motifs that exist within the visual vocabulary of my work.

Colour and the emotive response it can evoke is consistently present. Be it a seascape or a building in an imagined landscape, colour communicates more than form or mark can alone and it is colour that is the continuous thread in all that I create.


Solo Exhibitions

(2024) International Women's Week Celebrations, Theatr Gwaun, Fishguard

(2022) Time and Tide, Oriel Joanna Field Gallery, The Torch Theatre, Milford Haven

(2020) Taith, Oriel y Parc, St Davids room, St Davids Pembrokeshire

(2019) Residency, Oriel y Parc, St Davids

(2019) Celebrating Women and the Arts, Theatr Gwaun, Fishguard

Group Exhibitions

(2024) For the Love of Pembrokeshire, Oriel y Parc, St Davids

(2023) Open '23, Queen Street Gallery, Neath

(2020) Glasbury Arts Seventeenth Annual Exhibition, Glasbury Village Hall, Glasbury on Wye

(2019) Winter Show, The Gallery Y Oriel, Newport, Pembrokeshire

(2019) Celebration of Welsh Contemporary Painting, Oriel y Parc, St Davids

(2018) Welsh Art Week - Spotlight Michaela Hollyfield and Lizzy Stonhold, The Gallery Y Oriel, Newport, Pembrokeshire

(2017) Fresh Art Fair, Cheltenham Race Course, Cheltenham

(2017) Summer Open, Oriel Q Gallery, Narberth

(2017) Summer Show, The Gallery Y Oriel, Newport, Pembrokeshire

(2017) Fishguard Arts Society Summer Exhibition, Tregwynt Mansion, Fishguard

(2017) Summer Show, Oriel Llandudoch, St Dogs, Pembrokeshire

(2016) Welsh Art Week, Woolff Gallery, London

(2016) Spring Exhibition, Workshop Wales Gallery, Fishguard

(2016) Fishguard Art's Society Summer Exhibition, Tregwynt Mansion, Pembrokeshire

(2016) Graduate and Post Graduate Exhibition, Aberystwyth School of Art, Aberystwyth

(2016) Summer Exhibition, Workshop Wales Gallery, Fishguard

(2015) Women's Art Week, West Wales Arts Centre, Fishguard

(2015) Graduate and Post Graduate Exhibition, Aberystwyth School of Art, Aberystwyth

(2015) Affordable Art Exhibition, The Old College, Aberystwyth

(2015) Summer Exhibition, Workshop Wales, Fishguard

(2011) Mr Blue Sky, Fishguard Library, Fishguard

(2010) Womens Art Week, West Wales Arts Centre, Fishguard

(2001) Peninsular Daily, Eindhoven Dagblad Gebouw, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

(2000) Uit Eigen Koeken, Trammelandt, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

(1999) Graduate Show, Jelly Leg'd Chicken Art Gallery, Reading

(1998) Open Studios, Warehouse Artist Studios, Norwich

(1997) Graduate Show, Ashridge College of Management, Berkhampsted

(1997) BA Hons Degree Show, Norwich School of Art, Norwich

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