Holly Roberts

Holly Roberts was born in Boulder, Colorado. At the age of two, her family moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where she spent the remainder of her early years. When she was sixteen she graduated early from high school and started her college career, taking six years in six different schools to complete her undergraduate education. She spent her freshman year at Western State College, then moved to the University of California Santa Barbara for her sophomore year. Next she attended Instituto Allende and the Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, then transitioned to the University of New Mexico’s (UNM) Andean Center in Quito, Ecuador. Her time in Ecuador and Mexico ignited her interest in printmaking. She finished her undergraduate education by graduating from UNM with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in Spanish. After receiving her BFA, Roberts was hired by the Tamarind Institute, as curator of prints. There she was able to continue her printmaking while simultaneously attending painting classes at the University of New Mexico. After four years at Tamarind, in 1978 Roberts moved to Tempe, Arizona to attend graduate school at Arizona State University on a full scholarship. When Roberts finished her MFA, she and her partner, Robert Wilson, moved to Zuni, New Mexico so Wilson could pay back his medical school student loans working for the Indian Health Service. She and Wilson stayed in Zuni for eight years where their two daughters were born (in Gallup). In 1991 the family moved to Chicago, Illinois so that Wilson could complete his post doctoral work in sports medicine. Roberts and her family stayed for a year before returning to New Mexico where they settled in Corrales.

“The Content of Holly Roberts’ images comes from two broad sources. First is her nearly lifelong experience of living in the American Southwest, from an attachment not only to the colors of the landscape and its active outdoor lifestyle, but to the ubiquitous influence of Native American, Mexican and Hispanic peoples indigenous to the area. The second source, which gets closer to the meaning of her work, is a conceptualization of human emotions, cultural history and interpersonal relationships. The images that include horses, deer, birds and other animals frequently reflect the emotional concerns of the other works.” Her painted photographs have a psychological overtone.

Her technique from the mid 80’s to 2003 was to develop her own black and white photographs, cut and glue them to a surface and then paint directly on them with oil paint. This created an eerie combination of the made-up world of the painted elements with the occasional reveal of the photograph. It was this process and style that gained her widespread recognition, mostly from the photographic corner of the world, “I didn’t even think of myself as a photographer until I began to get all these awards in photography. I guess the photo world thought I was really great because I was so abusive to photography”

“The American Southwest continues to inspire and inform Robert’s work. Guided by her imagination and emotional responses to the landscape, Roberts breathes additional life and narrative into her photographs, turning clouds, birds, snakes, gravel and trees into compelling works of art. Her finished pieces are deeply layered, both in a physical sense and in the stories woven by her intentional choice of characters, scenery, color palette, and title. Roberts masterfully brings together ideas of mortality and birth, longing and comfort, spirituality and humanity, disguised by humor or through a lighthearted aesthetic. The artist’s use of allegory and characters [...] fuse together elements of spirituality and humanity.” The imagery childlike and primitive, but the themes of her work are deal with issues that adults face every day.

In 2004 Roberts flipped her process and, with the use of digital images and acrylic paint, began putting the photographic images on top of the paint. She explains, “I found that when the images that made the completed piece were made from photographs that came from disparate sources, but still related in some way, the images were much more powerful than just using the photograph directly as it was.” “In her photo-painting hybrids Roberts synchronizes the abstract and imaginary with the literal and everyday.” Around 2006, she began painting an "abstract dreamlike landscape" before adding her photographic work.

In 1973 Holly Roberts worked at Tamarind Institute for four years as a curator. After receiving her MFA from Arizona State University, she and her husband lived on the Zuni Indian Reservation where Roberts worked on her painted photographs and had two daughters, Ramey and Teal. She exhibited her work, and began to establish a name for herself when the Friends of Photography published a monograph of her work for their untitled series (#50). In 1991, she and her family moved to Chicago, where she set up a studio and continued to work, exhibiting her work widely. Upon returning to New Mexico the following year, she continued her studio practice while raising, with her husband, their two daughters. Along with making and exhibiting her art work, Roberts has developed an extensive workshop practice, teaching anywhere from 4-10 workshops a year in different locations at schools and universities around the country, among them Anderson Ranch Art Center in Snowmass, Colorado, Penland School of Arts and Crafts in Penland, North Carolina and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Holly Roberts (born December 22, 1951) is an American visual artist known best for her combination of photography and paint. “Holly Roberts caused a stir in the fine art photography world of the eighties by fusing painting and photography, painting directly onto photographs”. Roberts lives and works in Corrales, New Mexico. Her work is in the permanent collection of several museums in the United States.