Michaela Hollyfield

Michaela Hollyfield

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

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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

My work pre pandemic was concerned with gestural mark making; intuitive responses to marks and stains that I applied to canvas. Behind the work was a concept or a theme, which often manifested in a motif within the paintings.The Forest, the Moon, the Night time, the Fox, the Boat were all motifs that emerged in my work throughout my MA at Aberystwyth School of Art, reflecting parts of the journey I was taking into my past experiences and my own psyche.

After I completed my MA, the Lookout at Strumble Head became a new motif for me to work with. The building for me signified a transition between life, death and afterlife.

I completed a residency at Oriel Y Parc in St Davids in the September of 2019 and produced a big body of work from this residency exploring the story of St Non linking to Rhygyvarch’s ‘Life Of St David’, translated in 1923 by Wade Evans. Many of the titles of these paintings are direct quotes from this story and it was my response to the story that became the motif for this body of work. I was moved by the story of the Rape of St Non and also the Birth of St David, both of which were hugely disturbing tales of extreme circumstances faced by St Non. St Non is the mother of St David.

My work during the pandemic changed enormously as I found I lost my ability to paint in this way anymore. All the unknowns we faced, the huge change in life as we knew it. The limited social contact and lack of physical communication absolutely and totally affected me and my children in ways that words cannot articulate. 

We cooked lobster for the first and last time. I was inspired to try something new and also support the local fishermen of Fishguard who were suddenly unable to sell to previous markets because of the pandemic. I found the lobsters quite frightening and beautiful at the same time and after the traumatic experience of cooking one, because it really is like committing a murder, my daughter and I sketched and photographed the second one whilst it was unconscious to record this spectacular and most impressive creature of the sea. This experience inspired the Lobster paintings. 

Working representationally and from observation during this period gave me something tangible to hold on to whilst everything else remained so uncertain. 

During the almost two years of this limbo we experienced collectively, I took my children on many walks. We observed the sky, the sea, the sunsets in a much more intense way than we did pre pandemic. It felt as if everything nature was giving us had so much more resonance and also reassurance. The sun still rose and set. The sea still ebbed and flowed. The landscapes you see here are from that period of time. I have put the dates I saw that particular sky in the titles of the work. 

These for me are a record of my observations and experience of the time everything changed for us all.

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

(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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