LOIE HOLLOWELL

Hollowell is known for her otherworldly paintings and drawings of bodily landscapes. Through a unique lexicon ofgeometric and organic forms that represent elements of her body, the artist explores experiences of sex, pregnancy,childbirth, breastfeeding, and motherhood. Manipulating real and illusory space on the canvas, she uses radiantcolors, varied textures, and protruding sculptural elements to draw viewers into her energetic compositions.

In her upcoming show with Pace in New York, Hollowell will present ten new pastel drawings that document thedilation stage of labor, in which the cervix opens and effaces from one to ten centimeters, allowing the baby to moveinto the birth canal. Displayed sequentially on a rounded wall that reflects the shape of a pregnant belly, thesedrawings feature, at their centers, depictions of Hollowell’s own pregnant abdomen, rendered to scale. Below eachbelly is a circle the exact size of the effaced cervix as it expands. Meanwhile, radiating bands of color—whichrepresent the increasingly intense pain of contractions during the dilation stage—fill the spaces around the bellies. Ineach composition, these rippling colors respond to the hue of the swollen wombs from which they emanate—Hollowell assigns light colors to minimally painful contractions, while intensely painful contractions take on darkcolors. The cervical “circles” at the bottom of each drawing seem to pulse as the series progresses, culminating in ablazing cadmium red.

For this body of work, in which color is a highly charged force, Hollowell adopts a wide ranging palette to express themental and physical sensations she has experienced while giving birth. “When the first contractions started witheach of my pregnancies, I was filled with joy and excitement that I would soon be meeting my baby,” Hollowell says.“I rendered this stage in yellow, like the sun on a cloudless day, full of light and optimism. As my cervix dilated, thepain became increasingly intense and sharp, so I moved into bright, deep reds for that stage. My second birth was athome in a birthing tub—I was enveloped in buoyant, luke-warm water while also having this searing and heavy pain. Ifelt only an ultramarine blue could rightfully signify that experience.”

Press release courtesy Pace Gallery