Location: Italy
Artist’s statement:
My inspirations are nature and science. I like to deal with themes of
physical science and the cosmos by tapping into the sheer wonder of life.
I am interested in things that are invisible and cannot easily be
apprehended by intellect, because I think that they are the eternal ones.
My research reaches out into the endless energy that pervades the
universe. In my paintings, I try to evoke vibrating fields of energy.
Ultimately, it is a sense of equilibrium that I seek to express, a feeling
of inner peace and balance towards the attainment of a divine state.
Reminiscent of a dream voyage to another place, I evoke my own
subconscious while revealing universal truths about the celebration of
life. For me, painting is also a spiritual approach to life.
The ideas for my paintings very often start as collages like this ones, which I have been making all my life from newspaper clippings, even while traveling. Surely my training as textile designer helps me to find the right balance of dark and light, movement and stillness. And some of these collages, like the following examples, find their way to a finished painting.
I use color to immerse the viewer in emotion. (Red, for me, stands for passion and vital energy, while blue stands for calmness and the soul.)
Having studied and worked as textile designer, composition and
colors are very important to me and the final result must satisfy my
concept of beauty and harmony.
Like an architect, I like to construct my paintings layer by layer with high quality acrylics and pigments until I obtain the desired depth I want.
The dream of water is a cycle of paintings which reveal different states of reality and conditions of being. Water as a multiplicity of symbols and experiences that enriches life. Michelle’s work is very lively, changing and creating marvel and discovery. Its strength is to enjoy small and big events, if we are only spectators or protagonists. Like the daily use of water on our body is a pleasure that is continually renewed. To emerge and explore profoundness, even in a small way like swimming and pacifying in exchange of energy. There is also an immersion in emotions in Michelle’s work .Water becomes atmospheric while feeling lightness and opening up to the sky. And when you stand in front, it seems like a core you have to go across to encounter secret and mysterious things. The tension is accompanied by the discovery to feel energy growing inside you. The colors are sometimes compact, deep blue and zinc grey, but frequently mixed
Michelle Hold’s intensely colored abstract paintings masterfully layer texture and treatment to create compositions that depend as much on their tactility as on their visual features to communicate. Though Hold’s hand is evident all over the canvas, her brushstroke never becomes repetitive or predictable; its momentum and shape manages to define the organization of the painting while veering between long and short, splatter and scrape, purposeful and hurried. The artist pairs her forceful strokes with a blocked approach to color, lacing her paintings with strength and a bold vigor.
Palazzo Vitta, Casale Monferrato 15-23 september 2012
Invitation to the Blues «Out to the blue and into the black» was a song
by Neil Young in 1979, in the album «Rust never sleeps». In this game of
words and layers of images, many things are hidden like Elvis Presley’s
death, the war in Vietnam, the blinding fire of Napalm and the sudden fall
into the darkness. Yet all the evocative power lies in these two colors
(the blue and the black) filled with the symbolic character of both and
the game of images. «Out to the blue», in fact is a way to say “suddenly”
like a flash that arrives out of the sky. While «Into the black» tells us
about falling into the abyss of death or melancholy. In between these 2
colors, there is a state of the soul, a movement, a dramatic action and
the idea of disappearing light. In so turning Neil Young’s words 180°, we
could say that Michelle Hold’s painting is moving «Out to the black, into
the blue». The same colors dominate. The black and the blue are the
carriers of many paintings by the Monaco artist, often creating the
surrounding frame, the most important color fields, the background, the
ideal, or the spiritual place from where other colors (yellow, red) make
their appearance, like a knife or the sound of counter tempo notes. Then
there is the same idea of movement: moving from one place to the other,
from one ideal or psychological state to the other and the splitting
between light and dark. Here again, the terms are inverted and the motion
or the searching of the soul does not disappear in the dark but on the
contrary comes out of the darkness and overflows with the light. At the
same time, it is like a way of initiation: a descent into the darkness of
the inferno to make the light shine in a brighter way. Or sinking into
forgetting in order to conquer memory. You need to die to be reborn. Like
Dante, Gilgamesh or even better Orfeo who goes into the Abyss of Hades to
fight with the force of music by enchanting with his voice and his fingers
which caress the cords of his ‘cetra’. For the music overcomes the
darkness and brings light to the soul. «Blue dream», «Catch the silence»,
«And they danced» all attest to that fact. But also «Running on fire» and
«Free your vision» express the rising of light and the subduing of
darkness. The black and the dark blue frame the painting like a border.
From the inside, light is opening up. Sometimes the light is only pure
white but other times it opens in basic colors: yellow, red, light blue.
The rhythm of the composition is based on the violent contrast between
dark and light. The tension always goes towards light and harmony. At the
end of the catalog and exhibition we find paintings like «Just an
illusion», «Soulspace», «Skyfall», where finally light seems to triumph.
Apart from the significant use of colors, which Hold is well aware (“red
for me stands for passion and vital energy, while blue stands for
tranquility and the soul “), her color scheme is like an orchestra. Every
color has a specific role in the composition. We discover that the yellows
sound like “trumpets of sunshine that blow your bones wide open” to say
it like Montale. The reds are like an eruption of the violins covering
everything and other times like the solo notes of a guitar. The black is
a tambour that beats, or a big battery box, deciding the rhythm and the
structure. And the blue is a perfect companion like the low notes in a
rock band, and together with the black, it carries the song…or in this
case, every painting of Michelle. In the end, all of her paintings are
simply songs. Rock songs or blues. Rhythm and blues to be precise. A mix
of reason and feeling, science and nature (“My inspiration is nature and
science“ are her words) the rhythmic, rational line, the sounds of a
guitar like that of Eric Clapton, slow, capturing, sensual, passionate or
improvised or like Miles Davis, mad and impossible to predict. All
Michelle’s paintings are music. So you wouldn’t be surprised that the
painter listens to music while working and many of the titles of her works
are titles of songs. Some we can play and recognize, more or less known
Pop, easy or refined like «We will find a way» by Brenda Russell «And we
danced» by Macklemore, «Somewhere» from West Side Story by Leonard
Bernstein, «One step at a time» by Jordin Sparks, «Just an illusion»
.... Even this game of titles and quotes help direct the enjoyment
suggesting an empathetic approach without rational filters as with
listening to music. And why should we have a different approach while
looking at a painting? Why shouldn’t we forget about judging, forget about
incredibility, leave out the mania vacuous to look for a significant
relation to reality? Only through a “healthy and unconscious desire”, to
say it like Sugar Fornaciari, or through the «Epochè» by Cartesio, if you
prefer we can gain an esthetic experience which goes beyond the daily
routine. And all this rides on the wave of emotion: music giving the
imprint for rhythm, respiration and law. And all this is happening by the
movement of the hands on the canvas, strokes of a brush and palate that
transforms in dance… dance on canvas. That’s why Michelle’s paintings are
immersed in music. With every brush stroke music is touched. They float
in music. And that’s how you should see them. They should be heard like a
song of Tom Waits or Dire Straits, where the music gets into you,
transports you, and makes you dance.
Maybe Michelle Hold’s painting
should be danced.
Virgilio Patarini
is it real or imagination '
what do we leave behind ?
“Frammenti di mari”
“Cromatismi”
“Blue dream”
“the wave”
“un faro tra i flutti”
“Rosso vivo”
“Palcosceno”
“Rifrazioni di luci”
“we are too many”
“suddenly”
“passionatly”
“land of mistery”
“verde speranza”
“out of the blue”
“Just an Illusion ”
“erased in time ”
