Lonnie Holley | The Influence of Images
August 5 – October 2, 2021
Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present Lonnie Holley’s atmospheric, dream-like painted works on paper that feature repeated, overlapping silhouettes and three-dimensional effects. Titled The Influence of Images, this new series of paintings were created during Holley’s artist-in-residency at the Elaine de Kooning House in East Hampton, NY in 2020. During his time there he made artworks layered with spray paint and acrylic, adding an immediacy to the imagery. Nested shapes appear to radiate and float in the cosmos amid a softly diffused palette of grays, pinks, blues, and yellows that emphasize their transformative, mystical quality.
Lonnie Holley is a sculptor, painter and musician who has been making multimedia artworks since the 1980s. His improvisational studio process incorporates found objects including natural elements and repurposed materials to create figurative and abstract imagery that commemorate places, people, and events. In 2021, Holley has solo exhibitions currently on view at the South Etna Montauk Foundation (Montauk, NY) and the Parrish Art Museum (Water Mill, NY). His work is also included in the group exhibition From The Limitations of Now at the Philbrook Museum of Art, (Tulsa, OK). An 18-minute musical film about the artist’s relationship to freedom in America, I Snuck off the Slave Ship, co-directed with Cyrus Moussavi, was shown at Sundance in 2019. Holley’s work is included in numerous public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), American Folk Art Museum (New York, NY), Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, AL), High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), Milwaukee Museum of Art (Milwaukee, WI), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA), Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC), among others. In 2006 Holley received the Joan Mitchell Fellowship. The artist lives and works in Atlanta, GA.
