Loie Hollowell Born 1983, Woodland, CA (US)
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY (US)

Loie Hollowell’s vibrant sculptural paintings express aspects of sensuality and the life-creating potential of the human body. Hollowell distils the human form into supple yet direct shapes protruding outward from the canvas in exquisite relief. Contrasting, vibrant hues create the sense that her canvases are pulsating with energy. Hollowell references sacred iconography such as the mandorla and lingam, often joined in the choreography of sexual intimacy. The artist’s recent work directly references the physical and emotional experience of pregnancy and childbirth. 

Her joyful celebrations of the body are the product of intensive craftsmanship and precise brushwork, such as delicate swirls of the brush and subtle gradients. An intuitive stylistic link to Op-Art, transcendental or tantric art and feminist painting from the ‘70s and ’80s are historical genres easily alluded to when describing Hollowell’s work. However, Hollowell stands out in both approach and sentiment; she has created a new visual language aimed at capturing the overarching themes of the relationship between the body, the self, sexuality, time, and space.

Loie Hollowell (b. 1983 in Woodland, CA, US) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY (US). She earned a BFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara, CA (US) in 2005, and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA (US) in 2012. Hollowell was the recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Award a residency at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and the Queens Art Fund Grant from the Queens Council on the Arts. Selected collections include: Arts Council England, London (UK); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (US); Roberts Institute of Art (RIA), London (UK); THE EKARD COLLECTION; He Art Museum, Shunde (CN); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (US); Long Museum, Shanghai (CN); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (US); Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (CH).