Holly Roberts: works 1988-1999

This important new monograph provides an overview of Holly Roberts’ work during the past ten years. Roberts’ odyssey with the painted photograph began in the mid-1970s. She found that painting over a slick photographic surface, she was able to manipulate the paint – scrape it, scratch it, even wipe it away – with the luxury of never losing the underlying image. A modern pioneer of the method, Roberts ups the ante with an understanding of human dynamics just short of psychic and a technique that appears unstudied, but is in fact, quietly accomplished. The combination results in deeply resonant imagemaking, both haunting and profound. Holly Roberts is the recipient of two N.E.A. Grants, and the Friends of Photography Ferguson Grant. Her work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States, and is included in such permanent collections as the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Holly Roberts: Works 1989 to 1999 is the artist’s second monograph, and contains essays by T. D. Mobley, Robert H. Wilson, and Steve Yates.