The creation of pictorial experience is at the heart of Holly Coulis's work. Coulis’s paintings and works on paper investigate painterly space, often by way of color and gesture. Coulis builds abstraction using both her observations of everyday objects and the movement of her brush itself. Working from initial sketches, Holly Coulis first creates space through brushy lines and defined areas of applied paint, each outlined in color. She then further divides up areas and circumscribes forms. The result is abstracted composition intersecting with the odd still-life object – a lemon or an orange perhaps.
Holly Coulis’s forms act as spatial agents in a picture plane, rather than as substitutes for bodies in physical space. Writing on Swiss master Paul Klee, Bridget Riley notes, "Every painter starts with elements - lines, colors, forms - that are essentially abstract in relation to the pictorial experience that can be created with them.” Holly Coulis's forms jostle up against one another and dissolve, lending her compositions a feeling of movement and energy that includes both subject matter and a sense of abstraction. Color, rather than being the color of something specific, is contextualized by its surroundings. It defines space while also pushing that space both toward and away from us. The shapes in Coulis’s work shift, fan, and stack, creating depth as well as unfamiliar moments.
Coulis comments, "I never intended to push them into abstraction, it just slowly started to happen. Now, in the next body of work, I am starting to become most interested in the abstract elements, how the lines intersect and weave and the places that open up for color. Sometimes I even want to eliminate all recognizable form! I'm not in any rush to do that, but there is part of me that wants to see what would happen if they became completely abstracted. You can sense that something else might happen,” she says. "I create the language and then it feeds on itself. A number of possibilities open up a few directions (or not) and you have to just follow along. If you're a scientist, there's no end. There's no answer. You find an answer, and then you find another problem.”
Holly Coulis (b. 1968, Toronto, Canada) received her BFA from Ontario College of Art and Design (Toronto, Canada) in 1995 and her MFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA) in 1998. Holly Coulis was featured in the exhibition, "Pocket Universe" (Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA). Recent solo exhibitions include "Holly Coulis,” Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); and "Eyes and Yous," Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery (New York, NY). Holly Coulis’ work was recently included in "North by Northeast: Contemporary Canadian Painting” (Kasmin, New York, NY); Thailand Biennale at the Pimamthip Art Gallery (Pak Chong District, Nakhon Ratchasima Province); and “Evocations: Celebrating the Museum’s Collection” at Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS). Coulis has had recent solo and group exhibitions at Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery (New York, NY); Simon Lee (London, UK); Cooper Cole (Toronto, Canada); University of Georgia (Athens, GA); Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta, GA); Massachusetts College of Art and Design (Boston, MA); Sardine (Brooklyn, NY); Paramó (Guadalajara, Mexico); El Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños (Oaxaca, Mexico); Galleria d'Art Moderna (Milan, Italy); The Bruce High Quality Foundation (New York, NY); and Leo Koenig (New York, NY). Coulis’s work is included in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX); Fidelity Investments (Boston, MA); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); OZ Art Northwest Arkansas (Bentonville, AR); Rollins College (Orlando, FL); and UT Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, TX). Her work has been reviewed in publications such as Artforum, Art in America, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Flaunt Magazine, Hyperallergic, and FT Magazine. Coulis lives and works in Athens, GA.