Gwen Hollingsworth
2 - 26 May, 2024
This online viewing room introduces the works of Chinese-American artist Gwen Hollingsworth (b. 1998). Originally from Los Angeles, she is currently based in NY where she is undertaking the Silver Art Projects residency at the World Trade Center.
Connecting the landscapes of the interior self and exterior natural world, Hollingsworth’s paintings depicting nocturnal views of lush gardens and forests hints at the cycle of life, offering new spiritual paradigms and means of devotion. Derived from the artist’s interest in metaphysical paintings, as well as her introspective reflection on mortality and existence, the work charts the passage of time, feminine intuition, and personal experiences through imagery that exists between the lines of figuration and abstraction.
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'Each work begins with a dark underpainting, I don’t like it when the white canvas is visible beneath the painting as I like to create an all-encompassing environment within the confines of the work. Once the first layer of color is dry, usually after a few days, I begin the process of layering and wiping away. I enjoy painting very thinly as I like each color of the piece to influence each other throughout the work. I then follow by sharpening contours through successive layers. Plant-like silhouettes, and vaporous landscapes emerge, as if gradually remembered, lending my work a nocturnal and psychological essence, a sense of becoming intrinsic to the landscape.
I aim to create this environment that is almost receding into the canvas, beckoning the viewer enter, a void or space rather than a physical object protruding from the piece.'
- Gwen Hollingsworth
Gwen Hollingsworth
Lovesong, 2023
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 in | 61 x 76.2 cm
When I first started painting nocturne scenes, I was really fascinated by the supposed emptiness darkness holds at first, but then your eyes adjust and see so many shadows and layers to the black. So I started priming my canvases with black acrylic paint and layered a very deep ultramarine on top until it resembled the night sky and the landscape beneath.
Blue and red continue to be constants in my work as I now am thinking about colors more elementally and these colors’ associations with particular emotions and phenomena in nature.
I also like my paintings to exist in the space between real and not-real, where they’re almost like a fever dream or some place you’ve been to but not sure if you’ve imagined it. They definitely don’t exist in the realm of our world, but perhaps they could quite late at night when the veils have lifted.
- Gwen Hollingsworth
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Gwen Hollingsworth
Night Potion, 2023
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 in | 61 x 76.2 cm
In my work I try to seek balance throughout the composition and believe that the act of painting is a type of ritual and collaboration between myself and the work, and the space that wants to be revealed. I can begin a piece with an idea of what I want or how I want it to look in the end, but more often than not that changes throughout the course of making and that’s something I have to accept and adapt to rather than force my work to be a certain way; and it is in that changing and adapting that I’m led down more interesting paths.
- Gwen Hollingsworth
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I am interested in the concept of the Yin, the Chinese cosmological term for the feminine essence and her qualities: soft, flowing, life-sustaining, and, most notably, darkness. Creation occurs in the dark, whether it be roots growing in soil or revelations materializing from our subconscious in the dead of night. Earth and landscape are often associated with femininity precisely for their nurturing nature and life-giving potential. Night acts as a temporal-spatial equivalent of the feminine void, an intimate psycho-geographic landscape containing life-potential and the unknown, similar to gardens as a place rooted in the future yet experienced in the present.
- Gwen Hollingsworth
Gwen Hollingsworth
Summoning, 2023
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 in | 61 x 76.2 cm
Gwen Hollingsworth's artistic journey has been profoundly shaped by her experiences with landscapes, initially in California and now in New York. In Los Angeles, she developed a profound appreciation for space, influenced by the ubiquitous presence of the San Gabriel Mountains and the ocean. The horizon line became deeply ingrained in her perception, as did the hazy, existent-but-nonexistent realm, perhaps first experienced through the heat waves off the concrete on a hot day in her suburban upbringing. Light plays a significant role in her work, influenced by the warm glow of the sun in her parent's garage in LA and the cooler light in New York, where reflections and shadows dance on her work through the windows of her studios, creating unexpected interactions.
Her experience of nature in LA was often restricted to private spaces or sections of land enclosed by the freeway, leading her to view painting landscapes as a way of imagining more abundance within her work. In New York, while the landscape and fauna differ, the experience of nature being sectioned off is similar, though she now encounters it more up-close during her walks in the city. The urban experience of closed-off nature inspires her to create spaces of reprieve, hope, or insight through her paintings
As an half-Chinese and half-white woman, who grew up Buddhist, Hollingsworth poses particular importance in the concepts of reincarnation, mindfulness, and the impermanence of human life. This foundation in Buddhism naturally led to an interest in Daoism, a traditional Chinese spiritual practice that emphasises living in harmony with the natural world, rooted in balance and inner harmony. These cultural and philosophical influences permeate her artistic practice, informing her fascination with environments that exist in the in-between, where multiple truths coexist and where balance and harmony are essential. Through her practice, she explores the interplay between these influences, inviting viewers to contemplate the richness of existence beyond rigid categorisations.
Gwen Hollingsworth (b.1998) lives and works between Los Angeles and New York, USA. Hollingsworth received her BA from UCLA in Art and Art History in 2020. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Incantation’ with Maddy Inez Leeser, South Willard, Los Angeles (2023); ‘South Willard’, Gordon Robichaux, New York City (2023); ‘Humans, Animals, Hungry Ghosts’, curated by Gwen Hollingsworth, Le Maximum, Los Angeles (2023); ‘Global Citizens’, The Shophouse, Hong Kong (2023); ‘Frequency Illusion’ with Christine Turner, Roberts Projects, Los Angeles (2022); ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, Swivel Gallery, Saugerties, New York (2022); ‘Psychic Distance: Powers of Observing Relationships’, Loyal Gallery, Stockholm (2022); ‘A Hole in the Fence’, Everybody Gallery, Tucson, Arizona (2022); ‘If You Forget My Name You Will Go Astray’, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles (2022) and ‘You Lead Follow Me’, Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles (2021).
Gwen Hollingsworth's studio at Silver Art Projects, World Trade Center, New York, 2024