Artist’s Bio
Working primarily in oil paint, Joanne Holtje often uses the landscape, at times highly abstracted, as a means to express emotional content.
Because her self-guided training emphasized exploration, she moves fluidly between aesthetics, always honoring her intuitive process.
Since 2006 she has exhibited in a wide range of venues including the Fitchburg Art Museum, the Danforth Museum, The Painting Center Gallery, NYC, D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Concord Art, Concord, Oxbow Gallery, Easthampton, and Pulp Gallery, Holyoke.
Her work appears in the book, Creating Abstract Art by Dean Nimmer and on the cover of How we Burn, poems by Erica Charis-Molling.
Joanne now lives, works, and draws inspiration from the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts.
Working primarily in oil paint, Joanne Holtje often uses the landscape, at times highly abstracted, as a means to express emotional content.
Because her self-guided training emphasized exploration, she moves fluidly between aesthetics, always honoring her intuitive process.
Since 2006 she has exhibited in a wide range of venues including the Fitchburg Art Museum, the Danforth Museum, The Painting Center Gallery, NYC, D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Concord Art, Concord, Oxbow Gallery, Easthampton, and Pulp Gallery, Holyoke.
Her work appears in the book, Creating Abstract Art by Dean Nimmer and on the cover of How we Burn, poems by Erica Charis-Molling.
Joanne now lives, works, and draws inspiration from the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts.
Artist’s Statement
My paintings embody my love for the physicality of paint, exuberant color, and expressive mark-making. Much of my work references the landscape, some more literally than others. The wellspring of this goes back to my youth when I spent long hours in solitary wanderings in the woods, fields, and riverbanks of my hometown. I still feel most alive when drinking in the full sensory experience of being in and of the natural world.
I am interested in painting the spirit or energy of a place more than making a record of visual information from direct observation. I begin by randomly pushing paint around the surface of the panel. I welcome memory and emotion to filter through me as I work, allowing images to emerge and submerge rather than directing a predetermined outcome. This practice engenders a sense of openness and exploration which facilitates a state of being fully present to what is happening before me, much like the state I experience when in nature.
I like to keep a certain amount of ambiguity in my paintings with the intention of allowing the observer to bring their memories to the paintings and discover, perhaps, a favorite or forgotten time or place of their own.
My paintings embody my love for the physicality of paint, exuberant color, and expressive mark-making. Much of my work references the landscape, some more literally than others. The wellspring of this goes back to my youth when I spent long hours in solitary wanderings in the woods, fields, and riverbanks of my hometown. I still feel most alive when drinking in the full sensory experience of being in and of the natural world.
I am interested in painting the spirit or energy of a place more than making a record of visual information from direct observation. I begin by randomly pushing paint around the surface of the panel. I welcome memory and emotion to filter through me as I work, allowing images to emerge and submerge rather than directing a predetermined outcome. This practice engenders a sense of openness and exploration which facilitates a state of being fully present to what is happening before me, much like the state I experience when in nature.
I like to keep a certain amount of ambiguity in my paintings with the intention of allowing the observer to bring their memories to the paintings and discover, perhaps, a favorite or forgotten time or place of their own.