Prelude to Line and Essence by Hollye Davidson, An Exhibition and Artistic Immersion
An artist with strong South Florida roots and a profound commitment to her practice, Hollye Davidson is continually involved in a compassionate search for expansive joy that brings a stirring post-contemporary vision of the empathetic power of the canvas to her paintings and drawings. In her figurations, she makes the most poignant statements by employing a simplicity of line that presides over an almost ecological symbiosis of form and color. Over the past few years, she has also been creating bold and sweeping murals that capture this vision with her sincere and honorable treatment of imagined flora and fauna.
Our selection for the present exhibit Line and Essence is centered around twelve major canvases and four focal point works as they dialogue with a commercial urban lobby, a space devoted to transition and transaction. In keeping with the transient environment, the works will be installed in one day and will remain in situ for just twenty-four hours.
Four canvasses from the Albus series, Frau mit Tiger, Mein beiden Ichs, Eine echte Frau, and Portrait von Lisa, show us captivating, gestural portraiture and bring us directly to the honesty of the artist’s use of line to convey inner states. A companion to these works, the focal piece Tenderness reveals a highly developed example of this style, with line predominating over the remaining formal aspects of the portraiture, such as space or texture.
Next, we have chosen four works from the Equinessence series, Valentía, Inertia, Inquisitive Master, and Einstein’s Horse, where one of the most ancient of art historical motifs, the horse, is brought to this space of transit as a monument to mastery and remembrance. Apart from these, the focal work Galliope, naif heiress to Kandinsky’s Der Blaeu Reiter (The Blue Rider), draws us to a nondimensional environment of bare blue that is the only sustenance for our gaze as we commiserate with the movement of a sonsy mare who has cast off her rider.
Finally, the featured Candessence works, Fearless, Return to Yellow, Portrait von Jodi, and Freed Spirits explore how chromatic essence can lend substance to line and seek to evoke instantaneous emotion in a lithe, sublimated manner.
In a contemporary art world obsessed with conceptual translation, with the need for continual intercessions, indulgences, rituals, and liturgies that convey the intentions of artists to their audiences, Davidson appeals as directly to her viewer as the light will allow. This exclusive showing will be accompanied by the premiere of the immersive exhibition The Stair Pond inside the adjoining staircase.
Gined Lopez Ganem is the Co-Founder of Alberto Puerto Music and GG Art Space, with over 10 years of experience as a university program director and over 20 years of experience as an educator and content creator. Gined has been a contributing author at LnS Gallery, NuFlamenco Collaborative, Cultural Arts Exchange, and other artistic projects. In 2023, she was selected as a recipient of a Chase Breakthrough Grant for minority women founders through Digital Undivided.
Gined López Ganem, Founder, GG Art Space